


Spinning in Circles

by nightrose



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Dubious Consent, HYDRA Trash Party, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2018-10-08 10:15:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 24,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10384413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightrose/pseuds/nightrose
Summary: Inspired by coffeestainanalyst's "Windmills".The asset has goals, and he has a plan to get them.Primary goal: be reassigned for recreational use only.Secondary goal: avoid painful injury during said use as often as possible.Tertiary goal: be reserved for the exclusive use of Captain Rogers.It's been so long since he was allowed to want anything, but he doesn't want to kill anymore--and he knows the best way to avoid the field is to give them something they want more.





	1. Phase One: Mission Objective Set

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [迂迴前行 Spinning in Circles](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12258216) by [blackmusicds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmusicds/pseuds/blackmusicds), [play781choy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/play781choy/pseuds/play781choy)
  * Inspired by [Windmills](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9532013) by [coffeestainanalyst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeestainanalyst/pseuds/coffeestainanalyst). 



> This is a remix/reversal of coffeestainanalyst's brilliant fic "Windmills". 
> 
> There will be some dub-con touching but no sex in this fic. However, there is a lot of mention of past rape and other forms of trauma, and Bucky is not in a good headspace here. I wouldn't necessarily call this explicit HTP-fic but it definitely relies on the "Bucky thinks Steve is a handler" and other dehumanization tropes. Just to give a heads-up!

It doesn’t take long for him to think of a goal, once thinking is permitted.

The mission alone is strange enough—his previous handlers have generally given him as little leeway as possible. His most recent owner, Pierce, had a particular hatred for any indication that there was more to the asset than an empty body to be filled with whatever Pierce pleased for it to be filled with. He had always done his best to comply with that expectation. It had been easy enough, then, to be nothing. With regular wipes and trigger words in place, he hardly remembered he had ever been anything else. 

His new owner, on the other hand, seems to expect more, demand more. Not that his demands are anything like the ones the soldier is used to—they come in quiet, soft tones, are phrased like requests, but the soldier knows an order when he hears one. It’s not like mental compliance wasn’t expected before. Just because the thoughts are new doesn’t mean the process is any different. 

So: new mission parameter—learn what he wants. In that calm, quiet voice, his handler had said, “Why don’t you take some time for yourself and think about what you want? You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, Buck. And we’re gonna figure it out together.”

It didn’t sound like the orders he’s used to, but he still knows what to do. He’d nodded and gone up to his assigned quarters and closed the door. Now he is sitting on the desk chair, thinking.

Think about what you want. A baffling request. He’ll fulfill it, though, difficult as it seems. The asset always succeeds at his missions. And for some reason, the new owner’s orders are particularly motivating even though he delivers them so gently. His memory, though often faulty, provides an image he feels he can believe really happened at some point: his owner, smiling. His brain also provides the context: reward, the best possible reward. Somehow, the words he comes up with to describe it feel insufficient. He always wants to please, of course—pleasing his handlers is his purpose, and as a secondary benefit it’s also the best way to avoid pain. Yet this feels different. It makes the mission of wanting more challenging, since the stakes are so high. 

Still, he’s had to strategize before, during missions. It’s not as difficult as he expected, now that he has orders to do it. He’s surprised at that. His previous handlers always told him that he was stupid, that he wasn’t meant for thinking. And perhaps his plan is faulty, but it’s his. 

Rapidly, he comes up with three preliminary ideas.

Primary goal: be reassigned for recreational use only.   
Secondary goal: avoid painful injury during said use as often as possible.  
Tertiary goal: be reserved for the exclusive use of Captain Rogers.

It’s an ambitious list, he knows. And a challenge for him, since he doesn’t remember the last time he was allowed to want anything beyond the uncontrollable twitches of his traitorous body. Even then, he was often punished. He doesn’t know if there’s any hope of achieving them. 

The reasoning behind these goals is straightforward. 

He’s been allowed to recover a number of his memories now, and he remembers the kind of person James Buchanan Barnes was, before he fell from that train and died. He was a good person, is what he was. It’s simple but it’s true. He was a human being, knew right from wrong and tried to do what was right as often as he could. He was the Captain’s friend and he was almost worthy of it, too. While the asset will never hope for that, while he knows that he’ll never be capable of good the way Bucky was, he can at least cease doing evil in the world, if he’s permitted to. If Bucky Barnes knew what they had done with his body, what they had made him into, he would be horrified. 

Ordinarily the asset would never hope to be reassigned from the field, but it’s been three months since he passed into Captain Rogers’ custody and he still hasn’t been sent out to kill. It’ll be difficult for him to achieve assignment away from his primary goal, his purpose in existence, but he’s taken some steps towards it—his metal arm, for instance, was ripped off and has not been replaced. He’s already not as effective a weapon as he used to be. He’ll do more, cripple himself, if he must. He knows there’s no hope of erasing the crimes he’s committed, but at least he can stop killing now, even if his own body must be his last target.

The second is obvious—he does not enjoy being tortured. That’s always been the case, even when his mind was totally absent. He’d like to continue avoiding pain as much as possible, particularly since without it, his memories and ability to think are both returning at an encouraging rate. Those are both key, if he is to maintain his primary goal. 

The third goal… this one he has little hope for at all. Still, he lets himself imagine it, imagine himself installed safely in Captain Rogers’ quarters. He imagines how jealously he might be guarded, even that his new handler’s kindness might extend there. 

The best way to stop them from making him do what he doesn’t want to do has always been to offer something else in return. Unfortunately, he is rather short on bargaining chips. He doesn’t have anything to offer—body and soul, he belongs to them already. He’s had luck in the past, though, with seduction. In the 70s, he was able to convince a jealous handler not to share him, that it would be better if they were exclusive. It meant taking that guy’s dick a hundred different ways, sometimes a dozen times a day, but it also meant no one else could lay a finger on him. And once you’ve been fucked by a team of hundreds, the worst one man can do just doesn’t seem that bad.

So that worked. It might work again, especially since he’s in the peculiar situation where his primary handler (i.e., the person most likely to take advantage of his secondary function) also seems to be his owner (i.e., the only person authorized to make decisions about the ways in which he is used). 

It’s worth trying. Even if it backfires, he’ll be in a good position to make a move for his backup strategy. 

Captain Rogers, unlike most of the handlers he’s had in the past, is certainly strong enough to kill him if he’s riled up and the asset doesn’t defend himself. That’s a backup plan. Pursuing it carries risk, of course—that he’ll simply be wiped, and forget he ever wanted this. 

He considers revising his second goal, then. Maybe he should seek out injury rather than avoid it. If he were dead, he would never have to experience further pain, or conduct more missions. It’s an appealing thought.

But he remembers the Captain’s smile, and the shock that went through his mind when he first saw it. The feeling of reward, of pleasure. 

No, he can’t give up on that, not yet. He knows that the Captain would not be pleased if his asset were permanently incapacitated, even if he killed it himself. He shouldn’t allow himself to be killed if he can avoid it.

That doesn’t quite make sense to him, not quite, but there’s a hint of something else in the back of his mind, something else that tells him he wants to live.

He doesn’t know if he can trust that thought, or any of his thoughts. Still, he makes his plan. 

Better dead than a killer, better a slave than dead.

And if he can be Steve’s slave, well, that’s the best of all. 

There’s a knock on the door, and the asset sits up straight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad people have been enjoying this. Thank you for all your lovely comments! Sorry to say that this is another pretty short chapter, but here it is!

“Hey, Buck. Can I come in?”

It’s the Captain’s voice. As usual, it is gentle and restrained—he’s noticed that it’s invariably like that when he’s addressing his soldier, though he shows frustration readily enough with his teammates and others. The soldier can’t quite make sense of why that would be. A lot of things about his new life don’t make a lot of sense. “Of course,” he answers promptly. 

The door swings open. Captain Rogers stands there. He’s a large man, his bulk filling most of the door frame, but he doesn’t loom over the soldier the way most of his handlers have in the past. He’s dressed, not in a suit or tac gear, but in soft grey sweatpants and a blue shirt that clings over his muscular torso. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” The Captain obviously doesn’t expect status reports when he asks that type of question—he is visibly displeased, for instance, when the asset responds with a report on his functionality. It’s yet another of the many oddities of being in his chain of command. He takes a moment, considers the question more fully. “I’m well.”

“Yeah?” The corners of the Captain’s lips turn upward, though he stops himself from smiling. He doesn't want the soldier to know how pleased he is at this response. But he is. 

The soldier files that information away for later, and tries something. “Yeah, Steve.”

This time, the Captain’s smile is blinding. “Hungry?” he asks.

“Sure.” He’s always hungry, ever since his stomach started working again about a month ago. He was nervous about it at first, but the Captain—Steve—never asks for anything in return for the food. So there’s no reason not to keep his strength up. 

They sit at the kitchen table and eat double-decker turkey and cheese sandwiches. The asset studies his handler across the table while they eat. His expression is inscrutable. 

That’s rarely a good sign for the asset. Pierce was always readable—rarely pleased, but always readable. The asset, even with his cognition impaired by the frequent wipes, was able to understand what his handler wanted and when. That was key if he wanted to avoid pain. 

Steve, he just can’t figure out. That was fine when he was passively waiting for orders. Punishment was inevitable, anyway. He might as well wait for it. 

Now the asset has a goal, and it’s time to make a plan. That means assessing resources, logistics, and tactics. And he can’t do that if he can’t make sense of what his handler wants. 

“How’s the sandwich?” Steve asks.

The asset can’t figure out which response will please him most, so he settles for honesty. “It’s good.” Then, out loud, without thinking, he blurts, “You never used to cook.”

Steve drops his sandwich onto the plate. “You remember?” he asks.

Stupid. He should know better than to speak without thinking about the consequences. It was foolish to let the memory slip out like that. He should have stayed focused on what matters, on what would please his handler. 

“It’s just, you haven’t mentioned anything about the past, not since we came back here. I wasn’t sure if the thing, I mean, if your memory was—“

Before returning to live with Steve, the asset had been required to undergo a number of memory-altering procedures, which removed the trigger words implanted in his brain. Since then, though, they’ve made no adjustments—as far as he knows, there are no new words. Of course, that might not be true. He isn’t always permitted to understand his own functionality. “I remember everything,” he says, quietly. “Like I said at the base. Everything from before. Everything from during.” He tries not to flinch as he tells Steve the truth. 

“Buck, I—“ 

The asset finally dares to look up from the spot on the table where he’s been carefully training his gaze, averting his eyes to show that he’s submissive, obedient, not a threat. He’s shocked to see that Steve doesn’t look angry or disappointed, not the way that he would have expected. His handler’s blue eyes are misted with tears, but he’s smiling. 

“I had no idea, but I’m so glad. I never thought you’d come back to me. Bucky,” Steve is saying, and the asset is just about to tell him that he has it all wrong.

The truth is that James Buchanan Barnes was killed in action in Germany in 1943. He fell from a train and died. He was Steve Rogers’ best friend and most loyal companion and lover, the only one of the famous Howling Commandoes to fall in the line of duty. And he is dead, dead and gone. He’s been dead for the better part of a century. The asset is nothing more than a ghost that wears his face.

He’s just about to tell his handler this, too. Just about to explain the truth to him, the way he’s supposed to, when he realizes. 

This is what Steve wants.

This has always been what Steve wants.

And it’s something he wants from the asset that no one else can give him.

He wants Bucky Barnes back. 

And the asset can give that to him in ways that no one else can. 

There are also ways, of course, that the asset is going to fail at this, uniquely and spectacularly. There are things that another lover, a human lover, could give the Captain that the asset simply cannot. As his handlers at HYDRA so thoroughly showed him, the asset is not a person, only a tool. Try though he might, he can never love Steve the way Bucky did, never deserve him fully. He doesn’t have a soul. His emotions are simple, base, more like a dog’s than a man’s. As different as things are, now that he belongs to the Captain and not HYDRA, none of that will ever change. Even if the asset may want it to. 

But there are also things that he has to offer the Captain that no one else does. A human lover would have other friends, other interests, a family, a career. The asset will have none of those things unless the Captain finds a reason to command it. He’ll be solely devoted to the Captain’s pleasure. He’ll never say no.

And, of course, although Steve Rogers’ true love is dead, the asset does have Bucky Barnes’ face, and his body—or about eighty percent of it, anyways. He can give those things to Steve. No one else can.

That might just be his way forward. He might just be able to meet his own goal, through this. 

The asset has discovered a tactic: be Bucky. Be Bucky for Steve. Give him what he wants. 

What he wants that only the asset can give him. 

And just maybe he’ll get what he wants too. Maybe he’ll be so good at playing Bucky that Steve will never send him out into the field, never make him kill again.

It doesn’t sound likely, even in his own head. But it will make what he has to do a lot easier, if he remembers why he’s doing it.

“Buck?” Steve says, calling the asset from his thoughts. “I’m sorry. Jeez, I’ve just been babbling on. Ignore me. It’s okay if you don’t remember, all right? No pressure. It’ll all come back to you in time.”

“No, Steve. Don’t apologize.” The asset—Bucky—extends a hand across the table. “I remember. I remember everything from before. I remember us.”

“Oh, Bucky. You don’t have to—I don’t expect things to just go back to the way they were. Okay? Don’t worry about it. I know how much you’ve been through. I know things have changed. If you do remember that’s great, I’m glad, but—“

“We were together,” Bucky says, because it seems more like the way the Captain will want to hear it than ‘you used me then too. Even when I was human’. “We were—lovers. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“We were everything to each other. Including that.”

“We could be again,” Bucky says. “I would want that. If you do.”

It’s what the Captain wants. It’s the best way to be of service to his handler. It’s the only way to convince him that he’s worth more outside of the field. It’s the tactic that will get the asset to his only goal. It’s the right course of action.

It’s even, he realizes once he’s said it, almost the truth.


	3. Chapter 3

“I need a minute,” Steve gasps, almost immediately. “I’m sorry, Buck. Just give me a little time.”

Bucky (he must start to think of himself as Bucky now, if he’s to keep up the ruse, if he’s to please Steve) nods obediently. He doesn’t understand where Steve is going, or why, but he remains standing in position as Steve flees the room. 

He takes the time to think over his plan.

It seems that he has miscalculated seriously how Steve feels about the Soldier. This is the most logical explanation for his behavior, anyway. The asset has offended him, offended him with the presumption that it’s better for him to act like a human being. He’s not supposed to do that. He’s supposed to be a possession, molded to his handler’s will, always obedient. The notion that he could convincingly pass himself off as Bucky Barnes, not just a person but a good person, seems ridiculous now. No wonder Steve is so angry.

And angry, he must be. His reaction was certainly emotional, and the asset can’t think of any other emotion it might be. 

It only makes sense. The asset miscalculated badly. He’s offended the Captain by acting like there’s any way he could ever be like his beloved, and lost, friend, and that’s why the Captain left. He’s going to punish the asset now, and he’s gone to get whatever implements he will need for the punishment.

Well, it wouldn’t be quite right to call that a relief. This will be the first time the Captain has punished him since the asset passed into his ownership, and he’s not sure what to expect. He supposes it will most likely be extremely painful. The Captain is larger and stronger than any of his previous handlers, and thus more able to do damage and inflict pain. He also, the asset thinks with a shudder, has more reason to want to. The asset has certainly made errors before this one, but he doesn’t know if he’s ever miscalculated so badly as to act like a person. He would never have done that if he hadn’t thought it was what the Captain wanted, but that doesn’t matter. It never does. 

So the punishment will be quite bad. 

He had known that anyway. After so long without physical punishment, it only makes sense that the Captain’s first time disciplining his asset would be severe and quite painful. It will be a relief to have it over with, even if surviving it will be difficult. After that, he’ll know what to expect.

And perhaps there will be no more uncertainty. Perhaps the Captain sees now, realizes that the asset is much too stupid to guess what the Captain wants of him. Maybe he’ll give him nice, clear orders now, orders that he can follow and understand.

He tries to remind himself of his goal. He can’t go back to killing, even if it’s what the Captain wants. Better to decommission himself and die. The relief, though, of being back in his familiar position, of once again being expected to take orders, is almost too much to resist. 

He’ll endure the punishment. He always has before.

And this time, it will come from the Captain’s hand. Although he knows that might hurt more, he is ready for it. When it’s done, he’ll at least know what it’s like, being punished by Steve. 

He tries to think back, searching Bucky’s memories for any hint of what it will be like, but he can’t remember ever being punished by Steve. Strange that he doesn’t recall that. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad, then—or perhaps it was especially terrible. 

There’s nothing to be done, so he might as well stop worrying about it. He tries to let his mind go blank, not focusing on anything, not counting the seconds, just remaining still and compliant. 

He hears the door to Steve’s bedroom open, and does not permit himself to flinch. Steve’s steps are slow and soft on the wood floors of the apartment, but the asset knows when his handler is right behind him. 

“Bucky, can you look at me?”

He does as requested, turning around and looking up to meet Steve’s wide blue eyes. His handler is wearing the same sweatpants as before, and he’s empty-handed. He isn’t carrying any tool of potential punishment. That’s not to say that there’s no damage he might inflict with his bare hands, of course. 

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Steve says, and then takes a deep breath. “I’ve—I’ve done everything wrong, from the beginning. I see that now. I’ve pushed you too fast, and I know you didn’t feel like you could tell me, and I’m sorry.”

The asset does not know what to say to that, so he says nothing. 

“Do you know who I am? I mean, really, who I am?”

“You’re Captain Steven Grant Rogers. You’re my handler,” the asset answers obediently. He’s a little confused about where this is going, but it’s not like the rhetoric is totally unfamiliar. He’s ready to keep going, tell the Captain that he is the asset’s master, his owner, his superior in every way, but the Captain sucks in a short breath and speaks again.

“And who are you?”

“I’m your asset.”

“So you don’t think of yourself as being Bucky.”

“I’ve been trying to. I’ll do better, if that’s what you want. Or I’ll stop, if that’s what you want.” He’s been told to look at his handler, and he’s trying, really trying, but it’s so hard to maintain eye contact when he knows that the Captain is likely displeased at least and most likely furious. 

“What do you want? Who do you want to be?”

It’s not a question the asset can even begin to answer. 

“Is it okay for me to call you Bucky?”

What an absurd question. The asset has been called much worse things. “Of course.”

“There’s no ‘of course.’ There’s no… you don’t have to do anything you don’t want. Not ever again. Do you understand?”

He doesn’t understand at all. What an outrageous statement. He barely knows what wanting feels like. How is he to follow orders if he has to want each of them? How is he to comply not just in his body but in the confused mess of his mind? 

“I’m doing it again already,” the Captain sighs. “I’m really rotten at this. Look, why don’t we go sit on the couch? This could take a while.”

An order is a relief, no matter how gently it’s given. He sits where he’s told, carefully not touching the Captain.

“I’ve gone about this all wrong,” the Captain says. “I should have explained it to you from the first, like this. I guess I didn’t realize how confused you were, but that’s no excuse. So first thing first, I want to apologize. You must have been so upset and scared, coming here, all the rules changing, not being able to understand.” 

The Captain doesn’t wait for confirmation, as if he knows he’s completely correct. Which he is. 

“I should have explained from the first. You remember from before?”

“Yes.”

“We were friends, Buck. Best friends, and, yeah, lovers. We lived together, we did everything together. I never—I never wanted anything from you that you didn’t want to give. I never forced you, or hurt you, and I never would. Do you remember that?”

“But—“ He’s confused, but he bites back the forbidden protest before it can escape.

“But what? Tell me what you remember. It’s okay if it’s different than what I said. I want us to be on the same page.” Still that careful tone. 

“I fought with you.”

“Yes, that’s right. We were soldiers together.”

“I fought for you. I took your orders.”

“That’s true.”

“Why did I have to do that? If I wasn’t your asset then?”

“You didn’t have to. You chose to. Or, well…” The Captain sighs. “You were drafted into the army, do you know what that means?”

He nods.

“But you decided to go. You weren’t brainwashed, or, or tortured. I never would’ve done that to you.”

“But I killed people.”

“You did,” the Captain admits. “You killed enemy soldiers, and a lot of them were terrible people, but probably not all of them. You knew what you were doing, and you chose to do it.”

Unlike what the asset did, good and evil alike, whatever the handlers ordered. How the Captain must despise his weakness in submitting to it, in letting them turn his friend from a soldier and a man into a possession, a thing. “I chose?”

“Yes. And that’s what I meant, that’s what I thought you knew… I’m making such a mess of this. Bucky, you’re not the asset anymore, and I’m not a handler. You’re free. Free to do whatever you’d like. I’m your friend, not your handler.”

“You weren’t my handler?”

“I wasn’t then, and I’m not now. You don’t have a handler at all.”

“But then who is in charge of me?” This is so confusing. 

“You are, Bucky.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: there is a brief mention of sort-of-suicidal-ideation in the chapter. along with all the usual stuff.

After that baffling conversation, the asset is permitted to go back to his room. He likes having a room. He likes the door that locks and the window that looks out over the garden. He likes imagining that this space is really his, that he’s safe here. He knows it’s not true, of course. Steve could hurt him in here just as easily as he could anywhere else, or drag him out and put him in the chair. He has this room only as long as Steve allows it. Still, over time, he’s learned to take his pleasures where he can get them. If he waited for real safety, he’d never be able to draw in a breath. He might as well enjoy while it’s allowed. The way he enjoyed his sandwich, the way he enjoys being allowed to sleep through the night, the way he enjoys not being hurt, whenever he isn’t being hurt. 

He doesn’t expect it to go on forever. He doesn’t even expect it to last very long. But for now, he tries to practice enjoying things. If that’s what Steve wants him to do—and the order to think of what he wants has been almost the only order he’s been given the whole time he’s been here—then he’ll do it. 

He sits on the edge of the bed. He sleeps on the floor, not the bed, but he likes to sit on it. It gives him the best view of everything that’s going on in the room, lets him watch the door without being too uncomfortable. He can’t sleep on the bed, not yet. There are too many memories. He hopes he’ll be able to, one day. If he meets his goals, he may not have a choice. Steve may order him to share his bed, not just for sex but afterwards too. He’s not sure that would be a bad thing. The bed is comfortable, after all. 

He likes comfort. He likes to sit outside but only when it’s warm. He likes cheese on his sandwiches because it tastes good. He likes sitting on the bed because it’s soft. He likes when Steve smiles at him. 

He’d almost forgotten what pleasure was, when it was his, and not theirs. Now, maybe, it’s something that can’t be taken from him. Even if the room is locked up and the bed used to fuck him on and the food taken away, as long as he has the memories of these things he has something he never had before. 

The Captain’s words echo in his head. What do you want? Who do you want to be?

He doesn’t know the answer. But he’s starting to be able to think of what he likes, and what he doesn’t. 

He likes killing. He knows this. There’s a pleasure in the job well done. And it’s what they taught him—to like it, to crave it. He was safe when he was on the job. No one hurt him. No one forced him. He could do something well, and he’d get praised and petted and talked softly to when it was finished. 

But he doesn’t want to like that. He knows, he knows, that it’s not right. And his mind is spinning at the memory that Bucky was a willing killer, that he chose to go to war knowing that he would have to take lives. Did he not understand how precious every one was? Did he not understand that once they were taken they could never be given back again?

Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he was so naive, such a child, that he honestly thought there was anything in the world worth killing for. 

The soldier would laugh at that thought, but it’s almost sad. How terrible, he thinks. To take a creature that did not even understand death, and make him into this. Make him love to hurt. 

He doesn’t like being fucked. He knows that, too. It hurts, and it is… he wouldn’t have been able to put a word to it, before coming to live with Steve, but now he can. It’s humiliating. You wouldn’t think the soldier, an object created to fight and kill, could feel humiliated, but he can. Perhaps it is because it’s not his purpose. Perhaps it’s because it reminds him, reminded him, that he was once human. That it was once something more than another use for his shell of a body. 

Steve said that he and Bucky had been lovers. That Bucky had wanted to share his bed. He doesn’t even understand what that means. 

He wants it now. That’s what he told Steve. But somehow he doesn’t think it’s quite in the same way. He doesn’t think Steve meant that Bucky would have been willing to trade him pleasure for something else. There’s a different kind of wanting there, one he doesn’t remember. Or remembers, but doesn’t understand. His own mind is a maze, and he can’t be sure which. 

He looks down at his hand—at the prosthetic, where the metal used to be. He’s not human. He isn’t. He’s not Bucky Barnes anymore. He’s a monster that HYDRA made.

So then why does he remember? Why does he remember a tiny Steve, smiling a gap-toothed grin at him and chasing him around the playground? Why does he remember holding Steve close after Sarah’s funeral, feeling not fear or shame at the contact but something else entirely? Why does he remember weeping tears that weren’t for himself? Why does he remember Steve, not much bigger, kissing him in a dark Brooklyn alley while they shelter from the rain under a fire escape? Why does the memory feel so good? Why does he remember being proud to follow him? Why does he remember fighting back, cursing HYDRA with choked-out breaths, threatening that Steve would come for him, Steve would save him, Steve would kill you all every one of you rotten nazi bastards, Steve, Steve, Steve. 

He just has to convince Steve that he remembers. If Steve believes that he remembers, that he wants this, then he’ll make Bucky his again. His special asset, the way Bucky was back in Brooklyn, in the war. He’ll be protected, treasured even. 

That’s a goal. Maybe it’s not a good one, but it’s something. He just has to convince Steve Rogers, the man who knew Bucky Barnes better than anyone else, that the asset is that man come back to life instead of a horrific monster dragging around Bucky’s shambling corpse like a zombie. 

He says it out loud. “Steve,” sounding out the single syllable. “My best friend. Steve.”

It doesn’t sound wrong. 

“I’m Bucky Barnes,” he says, “and my best friend is Steve Rogers.” 

That doesn’t sound wrong either. He’s even convincing himself, a little. His voice doesn’t tremble, and he doesn’t lapse into any of the silences or pleas that the asset used. He’s close, he thinks. Close to getting it right. 

“I’m Bucky Barnes. I’m from Brooklyn, New York. I followed my best friend, Steve, to war to fight for America. I was captured. A prisoner of war. I was tortured. Brainwashed. I forgot who I was. But I remember now.”

A shiver runs up Bucky’s spine.

“I don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t want to kill anymore. I want to be safe. I want to be with Steve.” 

He’s shocking himself with his own boldness. But it seems right. And suddenly, for the first time in years, he isn’t afraid.

He stands, leaves. He finds Steve’s door, which he’s never dared to knock on before despite Steve’s promises that he’s welcome anytime. He raps on it twice, firmly, with his knuckles. 

“Buck?”

Steve’s voice is ragged. He’s been crying, Bucky observes, distantly. It doesn’t feel good, realizing that he’s made Steve cry. He wants to undo it. 

He wants Steve to be happy. 

He wants a lot of things, suddenly. He wants to feel as good as he did that day in Brooklyn, in the alley, in the rain. He doesn’t want to be touched, necessarily, but he wants to feel the way he did then, warm from the inside out though his skin was cold, touched and touching and yet not afraid, somehow. 

He doesn’t want to be afraid. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. That seems like the place to start. “I did this all wrong.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Bucky. Not for anything.”

“I remember,” he continues. “I do remember. We were friends. I remember that you loved me. I remember that I loved you. I just don’t remember what that meant.”

Clear tears are dripping down Steve’s face. Bucky watches in quiet fascination. It’s been so long since he’s cried himself. He doesn’t even know if he still can. “It’s okay,” he says, which is very clearly a lie. “You will.”

“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” Bucky blurts. “I didn’t want that.”

“What do you want?”

“I want things to go back to the way they were,” he says. “I want to be with you. To be yours. Not the way an asset is. The way I was. I was, wasn’t I?”

“You were mine, but I was yours. I still am.”

That doesn’t make sense, but Bucky knows better than to say anything about it. “How do we get back there?”

“Back—“

“Back to being together, back to normal. What do I have to do?”

“You don’t have to do anything, Bucky. All right? Not a thing you don’t want to. Just keep getting better, little by little. We’ll get there.”

“I don’t want to fight,” he blurts. “I don’t ever want to kill anyone again. Say you won’t make me.”

“Of course.”

He shakes his head, backing away. “No. No, you don’t understand. I can’t do it again. I can’t be that again. I’d rather die.”

“I promise, Buck. I know you might not believe me, and I understand why. I really do. But you have my word. I’ll never, ever make you hurt anyone. I swear.”

“Will you put me down?” he asks, trying to keep his voice blank. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t. If his life is over, he won’t have to suffer anymore. 

“Please don’t ask me to do that,” Steve says, and for the first time he looks away from the asset. 

“That’s not what I meant. I was just wondering. If I’m not a soldier anymore, then what’s the point of me?”

“There doesn’t have to be a point. You can just be.”

Bucky thinks about that for a moment. “I’m in charge of myself.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have to be a soldier.”

“You don’t.”

“I don’t have to kill?”

“No.”

“I can be Bucky again.” And it isn’t a question. 

“You can be anything you want. I just want to help you figure that out. However long it takes, wherever it takes you. I’ll be here, if you’ll let me.”

Bucky looks at Steve. “Yes,” he says, and reaches out his hand.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this fic was supposed to be pretty dark and filled with dub-con and it just won't go in that direction *shrugs*
> 
> Here's a thousand words of aimless fluff.

Becoming Bucky Barnes isn’t the hardest thing he’s ever done. It’s easier, for instance, than it was to let Bucky die so that he could become the asset. There’s less torture involved, first of all, which, though he knows he’s not exactly what one might call stable, even he can appreciate is a good thing. In fact, there’s no torture at all, and hasn’t been in quite some time. 

He tries not to get his hopes up that this is a permanent shift. He knows that Bucky would have believed that, would have believed Steve would never hurt him, but Bucky also never had to hold his own guts in his hands after a bad battle or execute an innocent child or take four HYDRA cocks at the same time. Bucky, in short, was an idiot. 

There’s no going back to innocence. He wouldn’t want to be that foolish, that vulnerable, even if he could be. If Bucky had been a little smarter, he might have been able to put himself out of his misery when he was first captured, not have to suffer for so long. He’s never going back to that. But happiness, maybe, he could have again. Not forever, of course. Nothing good will last for him. But for a while, for stolen moments here and there, with Steve, maybe he could feel the way Bucky used to all the time. Not safe, not sure of himself the way Bucky was, but happy.

He tells Steve as much the next morning, while they’re eating their scrambled eggs and rye toast. 

“I want to be happy.”

Steve spits out a mouthful of breakfast, but he looks pleased amidst the surprise. “Where’s this coming from?”

He shrugs. “I dunno. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, about the way things used to be. I was happy then. We were in love.”

“You remember that, or you just saying it ‘cause it’s what I told you?” It would sound like an accusation, but Steve’s voice is so careful, so gentle.

“I remember. I just don’t understand. But I want to. And I think I will, sooner or later. If you’re willing to help me figure it out. Even if it takes a long time.”

“If it takes the rest of our lives, I don’t care. I’ll be right here.” 

“How do you think I should start?” he asks. “I don’t know how.”

Steve looks baffled. “I guess I don’t know either. Would it maybe be good to go back to some of the old places? Walk through some of the stuff we used to do together?”

“That sounds like a start,” Bucky agrees.

So they take a car to the Manhattan Bridge together. Bucky wishes they could walk, but he still gets overwhelmed out in public when there are too many people around. It’s better for the two of them to cut straight to the Bridge, where they soon get lost in the crowd of joggers and headphone-wearing tourists. 

They walk together, shoulders not quite touching, to the center of the bridge. Bucky, at Steve’s suggestion, turns his back to Brooklyn and looks over to Manhattan. This is a view he’d once loved, he remembers. They’d made this trip dozens of times as kids, when they needed some time away from home, when they wanted to go on a date but had no money at all. The Brooklyn Bridge has a better view, but the Manhattan Bridge is closer, and in those days Steve couldn’t handle walking the extra few dozen blocks. So this was their place. 

Bucky looks over the skyline, examines the way the early morning sun is rising over the tall buildings, and smiles. 

“I remember this,” he says. “Not just being here. I remember how it felt.”

“Yeah?” Steve says, and despite everything, Bucky knows him well enough to read what he’s thinking. He wants desperately to know what Bucky’s thinking, but he’s trying to hide his eagerness, trying not to pressure Bucky to feel one way or another. 

“I was happy when I was here before. I was happy, ‘cause I was with you.” The words come without thought or feeling, automatically. Just as automatically, a smile spreads over Steve’s face, as sure and shining as the sunrise. 

“I was happy too. Sick sometimes, not always in good health, but always happy.”

“Are you happy now?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t want to know the answer, but he can’t stop the words from coming out. He doesn’t want to know the answer, though. Not until Steve speaks again. 

“I’m so damn happy, Buck. Just having you back is more than I ever thought I’d have. Knowing you’re safe, after all you’ve been through, that I have a chance to protect you, to maybe make up for one tenth of one percent of how much I let you down, to maybe one day make you happy again—of course I am. I’d be a fool not to be.”

Bucky watches the sun come up over the tops of the skyscrapers, and he looks at Steve next to him, tall and handsome and healthy, and he thinks maybe one day he’ll be happy too. 

They walk over the bridge to Brooklyn. The neighborhood doesn’t look much like it used to. Instead of Irish mothers with their noisy families, baking scones for breakfast, Jewish immigrants with their heads covered, hurrying back from the morning prayers, and working lads and girls counting their coins after a long night of plying their trade out on the docks, there are young women in skinny jeans and designer blouses pushing fat-cheeked babies in strollers and dreadlock-sporting white guys walking fluffy white dogs. But many of the buildings are just the same. The cobbled streets are just the same. And Steve behind him—taller now, sure, and not wheezing the way he always used to, but nonetheless—is just the same.

They wander around for a while. Their old apartment building’s been knocked down—all of Middagh street, in fact, has disappeared. It’s just a stub of a cul-de-sac now, making room for a freeway. There’s a new park behind it, though, along the waterfront. They walk around it together, and the morning goes by moment by moment. They stop by a bookstore, and Steve insists on buying Bucky a couple of cheap used science fiction novels, the type Bucky remembers always enjoying when he could still enjoy things like that. Then they head back to the park, Bucky reading his book on the bench while Steve sketches in his notebook.

“You hungry?” Steve asks after a while. 

“Starving,” Bucky admits, and he doesn’t even flinch. 

“C’mon. I know just where we can go. Pizza sound okay?”

“As long as it’s not that weird shit with brussels sprouts on top,” Bucky says, and Steve laughs. That dinner out with Tony had been an unmitigated disaster. 

“I think you’ll like this place.”

Steve leads him back along the waterfront, to a white-washed building that looks a little familiar. Bucky blinks, and then reads the sign on top. “Grimaldi’s?”

“Same as ever.”

“This place is still here?”

“I think they had to move it down a few doors from the old location, but it’s the same as ever. And just as good.”

The waitstaff hasn’t gotten any friendlier in the intervening century, especially now that there’s a crowd of tourists waiting in line for their chance at tasting authentic Brooklyn pizza. Bucky insists that they wait their turn like everyone else, instead of letting Steve play the Captain America card and cut in front of the crowds of students and foreign families standing behind the cordon. It doesn’t take long, anyway, and then they’re wolfing down a steaming hot cheese pizza each.

No, being Bucky Barnes again isn’t the easiest thing he’s ever had to do. But it just might be the best.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE's that angsty chapter I was trying to write!

Bucky creeps back into the apartment on tip-toe, hoping Steve won’t hear him. Of course, he’s not so lucky. He tries to restrain the flinch. Steve isn’t going to hurt him, he knows that. He’s got to stop acting like Steve is one of the handlers, or—

 

Or nothing. Steve still isn’t going to hurt him. It’s just that it’s so hard to remember some days. Sometimes the past melts into the present and seventy years in and out of cryo and in and out of torture feels a lot more real than Brooklyn ever did or still does now and sometimes he does or says things that make Steve look so, so sad, and he never means to but he keeps getting it wrong.

 

Fuck. He’s too worked up. He tries to take a couple of deep breaths, but it’s just not enough in the face of the sinking feeling in his gut. 

 

Steve smiles at him, of course. Steve is always smiling these days. It’s a little ridiculous to think anyone could actually be this happy to see Bucky. Especially when they live together and Steve sees him all the damn time.

 

It’s not bad, though. Not usually, except for times like right now when he doesn’t want to talk to Steve. 

 

There’s little chance of that, unless he actually _told_ Steve, which of course he still can’t do, even though he _knows_ Steve would leave him alone if he asked. In fact, that’s part of the problem. He’d rather deal with Steve’s questions than his stammered apologies. 

 

“Hey, Bucky. How did it go?”

 

“Fine.”

 

Bucky goes to sit in his favorite spot by the window. He tries not to look at Steve, though he can feel Steve’s eyes on his face. After a while, Steve speaks. 

 

“What’s the matter, Buck?”

 

Bucky shrugs. “I don’t know.”

 

He does know. He just doesn’t much want to talk about it. But Steve had told him it would be good for him to talk to someone, to start therapy, and so he did it. 

 

Steve didn’t order him to do it. Steve never orders him to do anything, not exactly. He just makes suggestions, gently and hesitantly, and reassures Bucky that he doesn’t have to do anything he’s not comfortable with. As if Bucky would tell him no, when Steve has done so much for him, and what he’s asking is so easy. 

 

It should have been easy.

 

All he had to do was sit in a comfortable chair in a brightly painted office and talk about it to a sympathetic, kind-faced woman. All he had to do was tell her what she asked—or not, she was clear about that too. He didn’t have to talk if he didn’t want to. He just had to sit in the chair and listen to her questions. 

 

_What are your goals?_

 

_What problems are you facing in your life now?_

 

_How have you been dealing with them?_

 

_Are those methods working well for you?_

 

_What is your living situation like?_

 

_Have you ever wanted to harm yourself or others?_

 

Want. That’s what it all comes down to. Others have always wanted things from him. His body, his skills, his loyalty. Steve wants things from him too. Wants him to be better. Wants him to be Bucky. Wants him to want.

 

When he doesn’t even know what that means. 

 

“Bucky?”

 

“I’m going to bed,” he says abruptly. He walks into his room and shuts the door. 

 

He doesn’t know what to do at first. He strips down, changes into the comfortable clothes he prefers now. He takes out the journal that he’s supposed to be using to record his feelings, but doesn’t know what to write. And then he sits on the bed for a long, long time, gazing at the wall.

 

Steve had painted the wall blue, because that was always Bucky’s favorite color. He didn’t remember that at first. He didn’t remember his own favorite color, but he remembered Steve’s eyes. It had frightened him at first. It seemed like a reminder. _Your commander is always watching you._ Now he knows better. Steve won’t hurt him. He’s said so again and again, and he hasn’t done it.

 

He hasn’t made Bucky hurt anyone else either. 

 

Has he ever wanted to harm others? Has he ever wanted to? He’s done it, again and again. Did he ever want it, or did he just want his own pain to stop? Did he really not know any better?

 

It doesn’t matter, anyway. It was his fingers that pulled the trigger, his hands around their throats, his knife in their bellies. 

 

He wasn’t allowed to own anything when he was the Winter Soldier, but he still owns the guilt, somehow. The responsibility.

 

He wants to scream about how unfair it is. 

 

He’s murdered people, he doesn’t even know how many. Generals and civilians, men and women, grandfathers and infants. They’re dead in the ground and he’s here on a soft bed and he’s supposed to be feeling better. He’s supposed to believe that he has suffered enough. 

 

The tears are something of a shock to him. He doesn’t remember the last time he’d cried, and at first he’s not totally sure what the hot wet feeling on his face is. Then he realizes, and that just makes it hard to breathe. He doesn’t deserve to be here, feeling sorry for himself, getting better. He doesn’t deserve anything. 

 

Bucky Barnes crawls under the covers, feeling small and hopeless, and cries himself to sleep. 

 

The Winter Soldier wakes with a start in the dead of night. He’s not at his assigned post. He’s lying in a bed, but not being made use of by any of his superiors. He can’t figure out why this is for a moment. This isn’t his assigned storage unit. 

 

His stomach drops. He doesn’t remember how he ended up here, but lapses in his memory are not an acceptable reason to disobey standing orders, even if he doesn’t know he’s done it. He’ll be in for a serious punishment, then. 

 

He thinks about trying to sneak out of the bed and hide, but he’ll only be punished more for lying, in the end. Better to take what is coming to him. Better not to make his crimes any worse.

 

He dares to look around, barely peeking out so perhaps his handler won’t notice that he’s awake, and sees the journal, the soft pillows, the open window and fluttering curtains. 

 

He remembers, then. 

 

He’s no longer the fist of HYDRA. He’s supposed to be recovering. He’s supposed to be Bucky again. 

 

Whatever that means. 

 

Steve had promised him that he didn’t have to give up anything in exchange. That he would never have to kill again. 

 

And he believed it. He believed it because he _wanted_ to, not because he had any proof. Because he didn’t want Steve to hurt him, didn’t want Steve to fuck him, and above all didn’t want Steve to look at him the way his handlers always had when they finished using him. 

 

Like he was dirty, soiled, disgusting. 

 

He doesn’t want Steve to look at him that way. He doesn’t want Steve to realize the wreck he’s made of Bucky Barnes, the terrible things he allowed to be done to the good and decent man he once was, and the useless shell that’s left behind. 

 

But just because he wanted to believe it doesn’t mean that it’s true. That’s the danger in wanting things. It can always be used against you.

 

Nighttime is the best time to do this. He’ll show Steve what he’s missing, make him realize that he can have Bucky anyway he wants. Then he’ll assign Bucky to be his, and keep him out of the field. 

 

His stomach turns, but he does it anyway. He knows he risking a punishment, risking refusal, but he has to do something. 

 

He’s been complacent for far too long, and he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve any of this. 

 

There’s a memory so strong and sudden it’s like a ghost is speaking in his ear. Zola’s voice, telling him those words. _It’s what you deserve, after what you did. After what I’ve made you._

 

He reaches out and silently turns the doorknob. Carefully and quietly, he crosses the threshold into Steve’s room. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> extra content warnings for this chapter: i'm gonna give it a blanket dub-con. details in the end-notes

Steve is fast asleep in his bed. That’s good. It will make Bucky’s task easier. 

He can just see Steve by the dim light in this room. He’s lying on his side. His eyes are shut, flittering only occasionally in the movements that signal a target is dreaming. His golden hair spills out around him like a pillow. He’s kicked his sheets down around his feet, leaving his beautiful body—bare except for a pair of grey boxers—exposed to Bucky’s eye. 

Bucky remembers this body. He remembers touching it, and wanting to. He could have that again, and he will.

He’s afraid now, but that’s only natural. It’s been a while since he’s served this purpose, especially for Steve. He might have forgotten how to be pleasing, but it will come back to him. It’s just a matter of practice. He imagines Steve will be patient while training him, too, though he tries not to let himself get lost in those daydreams. 

He has a job to do. 

Bucky closes the space between the two of them silently. That’s one talent he’s learned over many years of being a murderer. He can walk so that no one will ever hear him. Including Steve. 

Steve wants Bucky back. Steve wants to forget that HYDRA ever took him away, ever made something terrible out of him. He’ll never be able to do that so long as he’s denying himself, so long as he’s trying to make allowances for what HYDRA did to Bucky. So long as he’s trying to make up for something that he ought not to be thinking about at all. 

And it’s Bucky’s task, now, to help him forget. He’ll replace all those thoughts and fears with pleasure. He’ll show Steve that they can have something good even now, that HYDRA hasn’t stolen everything that was his. 

He reaches Steve’s bed quickly and kneels down beside it. He remembers, now. He remembers the way Bucky did things, the way Steve likes things. He likes it soft and slow, while he’s getting started. And then he liked to take control, the way so many handlers have, over time. He likes to be in charge. 

Bucky will let him, of course. He doesn’t mind that, anyway. It’s easier when he doesn’t have to make too many decisions, when he doesn’t have to keep thinking about the mission protocols and orders and—

Focus. It’s Steve that’s right in front of him, Steve’s preferences and desires that matter most right now. He’s got to please Steve, not someone else, not some past handler. He has to keep those memories out of his mind, or they might drown him, and he has work to do. 

He reaches out for Steve. Fortunately, he’s already turned towards Bucky. He isn’t hard in his underwear, the way Bucky remembers him often being just before waking, but that’s all right. He remembers doing this for Steve, too. 

Bucky reaches out for his boxers, pulling them down carefully, just far enough that Steve’s genitals are exposed. He pulls Steve’s cock out with a gentle hand. It feels so strange all soft in his hand, delicate and helpless. He doesn’t like the feeling, doesn’t like being the one in control. It’s much easier when he’s taken Steve’s soft dick into his mouth and started to suck slowly and carefully. He can feel how quickly it begins to harden. He’s done this before, he knows, though he doesn’t remember all the details. He’s taken Steve into his mouth just like this, has carefully coaxed him into arousal and then back to calm again. He’ll do that now.

He pays cautious attention to the feeling of Steve’s cock against his tongue, the way it slowly begins to swell and harden. Just before it’s reached its full length, there’s suddenly a hand in Bucky’s hair, pulling hard. Bucky holds his breath and follows where the commanding grip goes, letting Steve fuck his way deeper into his throat. 

He hears a gasp from above him, high-pitched and breathy. “B-bucky—“

And then Steve must wake up, because all of a sudden Bucky is being pushed physically backwards, falling flat onto his ass. It barely registers as pain to him, but Steve reacts as though he’s dismembered Bucky. 

“Oh my god, Bucky. Buck, are you okay?” Steve is saying. 

“I’m fine,” Bucky manages. “Just let me finish. Don’t worry, Steve. I’m okay.”

“Jesus. Bucky.” Steve can’t seem to stop saying his name. Bucky is half-tempted to roll his eyes and tell Steve that he knows who he is, but he figures that’s pretty unlikely to get him what he wants. What he wants is to be allowed to finish sucking Steve off. What he wants is to be allowed to prove that he’s a good plaything, that he’s better off in Steve’s control than in the field. 

What he gets is a hand reaching out to him, pulling him up onto the bed. He’s hopeful for a second until he sees the position that Steve is putting the two of them in—sitting side by side, and basically miles apart. 

“You all right?” he asks again. 

“Like I said, Steve, I’m fine.” He tries to use Steve’s name a lot. It’ll convince him that Bucky knows who he is, that he isn’t confused or anything. He just wants things to go back to the way they were. He just wants to be allowed to be Steve’s again, Steve’s and nothing else. He knows that was his life, once. He wants that back. 

“You want to tell me what brought this on?”

“I wanted to,” Bucky says. He knows what Steve wants to hear. 

“What does that mean, Buck? To you. What are you thinking, when you say that?”

“I woke up. I missed you. I wanted to be close to you again, the way we used to be.” And every bit of that is true, too. He hopes it doesn’t make Steve angry. His asset isn’t lying to him, after all. 

“And I’m here,” Steve says, his voice so calm and steady. “I’m right next to you, all right? And I’m always happy to remind you of that. But you can’t…”

“I can’t what?”

“You can’t touch me like that, Buck. Not ever again.”

“What do you mean?” Bucky asks, confused. “Did I not do it right?” He had been so sure that he was accessing the right memories, that he was recalling exactly the way Captain Rogers preferred to be serviced in the mornings. 

“We can’t have sex. Look, do you understand what consent is?”

“The act of giving permission for something to happen, agreement,” Bucky defines neatly. His memory has also been enhanced, and certain legal knowledge was necessary. 

“But in a sexual context?”

“No.”

“It means… it means you have to agree to sex for it to be okay, and to know what you’re agreeing to. It’s why what HYDRA did to you was wrong, even if you said you wanted it, because you didn’t have the option to say no. And it’s why you can’t just do stuff to me, okay? Even if you’re sure it’s what you want. Just ask me first, and respect the answer I give. Can you do that?”

Bucky is baffled. He’s never heard of such a thing before. This is even more confusing than when Steve tried to tell him he was Bucky for the first time. “So that’s the difference. Like you were saying. Between what you and I used to do and what HYDRA did. That’s why want is so important?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, seemingly relieved. 

“And so what I did to you just now—“ Bucky is realizing as he says it— “That was horrible. That was wrong. I—I hurt you…”

“Hey,” Steve says, reaching his hand towards Bucky impulsively. He freezes halfway there, though, his fingers lying open in the space between them. “I forgive you, Buck. It’s not the same at all as what they did. I know it seems real similar, but it’s not the same. You weren’t trying to hurt me, and you stopped when I told you to. Just… just promise me you aren’t gonna do that again, okay?”

Bucky is only too glad to make that promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky starts to perform oral sex on a sleeping Steve. He doesn't understand that what he's doing is wrong and he's very triggered at the time.


	8. Chapter 8

The asset doesn’t sleep that night, for reasons that are probably obvious.

He passes his time pacing the length of his assigned sleeping quarters and trying not to fantasize about what punishment will be like, when it comes. 

Finally, in the early hours, he hears a sound in the kitchen. Once he’s finished jumping out of his skin with fright, he lets the door creak open in order to explore what’s waiting outside. 

He’s been afraid of the consequences of his disobedience yesterday, but as it turns out, Steve is only gentle with him. He wakes up earlier than the asset in order to be waiting for him in the morning, or possibly he never went back to sleep after what Bucky did to him. 

Steve sits, looking utterly like the commander he is, at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee. This, it seems, is the spot where they meet to speak uncomfortable truths that Bucky would prefer to leave unspoken. 

Well, it’s not up to him to decide, at least. He doesn’t have to worry about the right thing to do. Steve makes those decisions, and Steve has evidently decided that they’re going to talk about it, whether Bucky likes it or not. All Bucky has to do is figure out how to explain himself. Right. Easy enough. 

“How are you feeling, Buck?” Steve’s tone is infuriatingly calm and gentle. 

“Like shit,” Bucky answers honestly. Lying to Steve won’t get him anywhere. He’s in enough trouble as it is.

He catches that thought, though. No, he’s not in trouble. Steve won’t hurt him, won’t punish him, even though he’s ruined everything. 

He almost wishes Steve would. A quick beating, a wipe, and he could forget what he’d done last night. It would be as though it never happened. Things were simpler when they were like that, anyway. Even when he didn’t know his own name, he knew what kind of treatment to expect. Compliance or pain. Obedience or torture. Simple, predictable, easy to follow. 

But Steve treats him better than that. Steve knows that he can learn from his actions, knows that he can be trained to behave. He won’t just beat Bucky and wipe him. He’ll explain to him why what Bucky did was wrong, with agonizing slowness, and then let him remember it so he doesn’t do it again. 

“Did you get any sleep?”

“No, sir.” The honorific slips out before Bucky can bite it back, even though he knows Steve doesn’t like being called that. He doesn’t dare look up to see the expression on Steve’s face. Instead, he keeps his eyes trained firmly on the patch of floor between his feet. He almost jumps out of his skin with surprise when Steve speaks again after a long, long silence. 

“I’m sorry.”

Bucky’s surprised at that. It’s supposed to be the other way around. He ought to be the one apologizing, begging for forgiveness, pleading for mercy. Steve has nothing to apologize for.

“I wish…” Steve continues, and his voice breaks. “I just wish you weren’t afraid of me. Fuck. Forget I said that. I know it’s selfish.”

Bucky doesn’t understand. He’s not afraid of Steve, not really. Not any more than he’s afraid of anything. He doesn’t think Steve would hurt him just for fun, or break his legs because he talked out of turn, or stick a cattle prod up his ass to see how loud he’d scream. He really doesn’t. Steve hasn’t done anything like that to him. He hasn’t so much as raised his voice to Bucky in the time since he’s been here. 

“I felt like we were making progress. You said you… you wanted to be happy. Was that true? Or were you just saying that because you knew it’s what I wanted?”

Bucky’s not sure what the difference is, but he does know enough to be quite aware that that’s not a good answer. It won’t please Steve. “I don’t know,” he says, honestly, miserably. 

“Buck, don’t…” Steve stops himself, though, before offering whatever rebuke he was considering. “It’s okay. It’s okay for that to be the answer. I’m not gonna hurt you for it, no matter what you say.”

“Thank you,” Bucky replies, perhaps nonsensically, because it seems polite. 

“There’s something I want to ask you,” Steve says, slowly and very carefully. Bucky braces himself for whatever it’s going to be. “I’d really appreciate it if you can answer honestly, if… if you feel like you can.”

“Okay?”

“Do you think that you should maybe live somewhere else? I’m really happy to have you here. Of course I am. Don’t think that I’m sending you away, or anything like that. But I don’t want… if being around me is making things harder for you, if… if you’d be better, maybe, on your own, then… then I think you should go. I’ll help you find a place. Maybe a caretaker, someone to help you out. If that’s what you think would be best.”

“Is that what you want?” Bucky asks. “Will you tell me the truth?”

“Of course I will. No, Bucky. It’s not what I want. I want you to be with me. But more than I want that, I want you to get better. And if you can’t, if there’s no going back to how things were, then I just want you to be happy. I want you to have a new life, a good life. With or without me. That’s the most important thing to me.”

Bucky takes time to think about his answer. If Steve wants the truth, then Bucky will give it to him. Steve, after all, is so gentle with him, so rarely asks for anything at all. 

His first instinct is to say yes, yes, he wants to stay, and not consider it any more. After all, that way he can give Steve what he admits he wants—having the asset nearby—while continuing to work towards figuring out what he really wants, what would actually please him, repay him for all his many kindnesses. 

On the other hand, Steve has said he wants the asset to get better. He’s not sure what that means, and it would be foolish of him not to consider how best to achieve that goal. It’s undeniable that Steve’s presence is a distraction for the asset. Activities like their outing to get pizza—pleasant as it seemed at the time—don’t serve Steve’s goals for the asset in any obvious way. Certainly, it might be part of “getting better” to be able to function uncomplainingly among civilians, to be able to blend in and seem normal, but whatever the asset accomplished on that day was undeniably temporary. He hasn’t made real progress, just gone around and around in circles, disappointing Steve again and again.

But then, Steve didn’t ask him to figure out how to follow his commands, spoken or unspoken. He asked Bucky what he wanted, what would make him happy. He still doesn’t totally understand what that means, but he wants to do what he’s supposed to.

He was happy that day. He was happy walking across the bridge with Steve, watching the sun come up, eating pizza. If happiness is what he thinks it is, a warm, soft feeling in his chest, a sensation of wanting more, an absence of pain, then he was happy then.

And as he thinks back, as he tries to remember the fuzzy and distant before, when he and Steve were sharing a single bed in Brooklyn, when they were boys together, when they tumbled into the same bed, laughing, when Steve saved him that first time he was captured—he was happy then too.

There’s one thing that all these memories have in common. It’s not just the absence of being hurt. It’s not just not being forced to kill. It’s not just good food. It’s Steve. 

Steve makes him happy. He always did before, and he still does now. Bucky has changed. He can’t be the carefree boy he was before. As Steve said, he probably never will be again. 

But he can be with Steve. He can take the outstretched hand that Steve is offering him. 

He’ll have to do better. He knows that. There can be no more outbursts like last night’s. He’ll have to listen to what Steve is saying. If that means living in anxiety, he’ll have to tolerate the feeling. He’ll have to wait to learn to trust him, bit by bit. Then, maybe, Steve will want him the way he used to, want to be with him, want to stand at his side again. 

“I want to stay,” Bucky says, and then adds, in the hopes of being just a little more convincing, “Please don’t send me away. I know I messed up really bad last night. It won’t happen again. Maybe you could lock me in my room at night, or tie me up at least, if you’re worried about that. I don’t mind, I promise.”

“Bucky! Bucky, slow down. All right, okay? I’m not going to send you away. This is your home, as long as you want it to be. I just… I was thinking last night, and I realized I had just kind of assumed that the best place for you was with me, back when I thought that things were different. I mean, when I thought that you weren’t…”

Bucky is grateful that Steve doesn’t say completely broken, though of course he must be thinking it. 

“When I realized you weren’t totally sure what was happening. That you didn’t know you could trust me. And I seriously, I just want you to be happy more than anything. To feel safe. If you’re telling me here is the best place for you to do that, I believe you. I might lock my door at night, for a while, ’til… til you’re thinking straight again, but I’m not going to tie you up or anything like that. I could never do that to you. And you’ll stay right here, with me. And we’ll figure it out. As long as that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want,” Bucky says. Then, for the first time, he looks up at Steve, meeting his bright blue eyes. He notices how ringed with shadows they are, how obviously and visibly weary Steve is. He hesitates, and then says, hoping he’ll be heard, “I really am sorry about last night. Not ‘cause I think you’re going to do anything bad to me. Because I don’t want to hurt you, and I did something you didn’t want. And I’m really sorry. You don’t have to say anything. I just want you to know that.”

The lines around Steve’s eyes crinkle up when he smiles. Bucky thinks he remembers that, from before. “Thank you,” he says. “Now, what do you want for breakfast?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Hope you'll enjoy this chapter. I have to announce, unfortunately, that this fic will be going on hiatus for about a month (likely until July 10th). It's the end of my semester and I really need to focus on schoolwork, and then I'll be out of the country without internet access. Hopefully I've left things in a pretty positive place, though, and should be able to wrap the fic up in a few more chapters after I get home!

There are happy days again, after that. 

They don’t start immediately, but Bucky takes steps to make it happen. He’ll probably never be as innocent as he used to be, but at least he can be something more than a grim weight holding Steve back. He can help himself get better, little by little.

Maybe that way, Steve will let him stay. Maybe that way, he’ll be good for him in the long term. Even if he’s never allowed to serve Steve the way he wants to (or thinks he wants to? want is confusing, still), he can do some things. 

It starts by going to the doctor’s appointments Steve has been making for him, the ones with the doctor whose job it is to make your brain get better. There were psychologists in the old days, too, but they were for real nuts. Now everyone has one, apparently. Even Steve goes, and Steve is just about as stable as anyone could be, under the circumstances. 

Although Steve doesn’t make Bucky leave, Bucky takes the hint and starts spending a little more time outside the house and on his own. At first, he’d been afraid to go too far. If he strayed, Steve might punish him—or, worse, decide that he was once again fit to be deployed onto the field. But again and again, Steve has assured him that isn’t going to happen, and Bucky has to believe him. Tries to believe him.

He doesn’t do anything that might make him a better soldier. Doesn’t go to the gun range, or even the gym. But he also doesn’t try to make himself a better fucktoy.

He could practice those skills, too. He knows that. He could be stretching to become more limber, buying toys to practice on, or even going out and finding men to use him and hurt him if he fails. It wouldn’t be hard, he assumes. His handlers had always been eager enough to use him before, even if he was disgusting, broken, unwanted, they still wanted him like that, sometimes again and again until he was sure he couldn’t bear it. He’s not sure why he doesn’t do that, since he could. Since it would make him better. But he doesn’t do it. He doesn’t even feel that he should, for some strange reason that he can’t name. 

Steve asked if Bucky trusted him. Maybe, maybe he does. Maybe that’s what this is, this unnamed feeling that lets him walk away from what he knows his duties are and towards, instead, the things that he, forbidden and uncertain, wants, wants, wants. 

Instead of going to dirty bars or dark clubs he goes to places in the city. 

He walks back and forth across the Brooklyn Bridge. He sits in forgotten reference rooms in small branch libraries, reading or just scanning the titles in the shelves. He lies in the grass in Central Park, when it’s raining or snowing or freezing cold, and just looks up at the sky and feels the weather burn or freeze or drench him. 

And most of all, he goes to museums. He sits on the benches and stares at what’s on the walls. He wears a hoodie pulled up so people don’t stare at his missing arm or his familiar face, but mostly the crowd of strangers passes him like a long slow breath. He’ll sometimes sit in one place at the Met for hours before returning home. He always tells Steve where he is, though, so he doesn’t worry, and so his commander can summon him home if he needs Bucky for any reason. Steve never does, though sometimes if Bucky has been out for a really long time, Steve will send him a quick “You ok?” Bucky always answers right away, offering to come back, and Steve just replies. No, stay as long as you want. Have fun. What do you want for dinner?

After a week or so of daily trips, he discovers he doesn’t have to stay in the main galleries, where there is a constant parade of people. Instead, he wanders off into little side hallways, or the room upstairs where there are dozens of Greek statues. Not the big ones with no heads, but little comical figurines of actors or old man or grinning ladies, and shards of pottery, and pieces of jewelry. He likes to look at them and imagine someone wearing them, thousands and thousands of years ago. He likes to imagine a long life and a peaceful death for the woman who owned that bracelet, the man who wore those rings. He likes to imagine that time healed those wounds, all wounds. Even if it takes thousands of years. 

His favorite, though, is the gallery of sketches. It reminds him of something, these little faded pencil drawings, these little framed snippets of life. Someone worked hard to create these, labored over them, loved every line. Someone might have dreamt of one day being in this museum, enclosed within these famous walls. Probably they didn’t imagine that their work for posterity would be a sketch of only a few inches wide, mostly unremarked on by those that do see it, in a hallway where almost no one goes. Bucky recognizes that this ought to be a sad thought, but he doesn’t find it so. Instead, he thinks, this is a strange chance for him. There isn’t much that he can do, a sad, broken thing like him. He can’t be what Steve needs, whatever that is. He can’t be a fighter again. 

But for whoever drew these forgotten sketches, whoever dreamed that dream long ago, he can be the thing they want most. A pair of eyes, looking. 

He has that to give. 

It sparks something deep within him. A memory, he thinks. He wonders if he used to come here with Steve, before, in the golden past that Steve keeps imagining. 

He wonders if things really were so good, the way Steve seems to imagine them. It’s hard to imagine anything could be as wonderful as the past that Steve imagines, and especially that anything that involves Bucky could be. But he wants to believe Steve. Steve is his commander, after all. 

When he gets home, Steve will ask him how his day was. Bucky will say it was good, tell him where he went, that it was relaxing, peaceful. It always is. 

Other times, he doesn’t go out. Some days he stays in his room all day. He sits on the floor, not on the bed, and stares out the window. Those are the days that it’s the worst, and he’s not sure what came first. Are things harder for him because he doesn’t go out, or does he not go out because things are hard, or some kind of strange loop that he can’t explain, can’t describe, certainly can’t fight back against?

There are voices in his head. Not literally. The doctors always ask him that when they’re running through the rapid-fire series of diagnostic questions: do you feel happy sad angry anxious irritable worthless helpless do you see things that aren’t there do you feel people are following you do you hear voices no one else can hear.

He knows these aren’t real. They aren’t there with him. They are, he assumes, memories, although the way they’ve come back to him means that he doesn’t have the context that would allow him to place them like that, as part of his life that he understands, that he can move on from. They’re just whispers, words that are hard, sometimes, to even tell apart from his own thoughts.

You’re disgusting. There’s something dirty inside you, something everyone can see. That’s why we’re doing this to you. Because you deserve it. Because you’re made for it.

He tries not to listen. He tries not to ask himself whether or not it’s true. 

But he can’t stop hearing the whisper in the back of his mind on those days. He just sits and stares and listens and waits for it to get quieter. When it does—and that’s the good thing, it always, always does—he’ll stand up and find Steve in the kitchen, and he’ll make dinner with him or go for a walk or watch Netflix or something else to get the sound of those voices out of his head. They speak different languages, German, Russian, English. Some are old, some are young, most male but a few female. And they always say the same thing, whatever the words they choose are. 

They say that Bucky is nothing, that he’s disgusting, and most of all that he deserved this, that he made them do it somehow, by being who he is, by being sick and filthy. 

He knows he used to believe it, but he can’t quite remember why. Of course, that doesn’t make it easy to live with, the constant pounding reminders of his own inferiority, but it’s not as impossible as it used to be, either. 

They’re just memories. That’s what he’s starting to believe. And perhaps he can leave them behind.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick bonus chapter before I have to leave; or, Bucky rediscovers sexual desire.

There’s a strange new thing happening in Bucky’s brain recently.

It’s not a memory, he doesn’t think. It’s not quite like when the memories of a younger, thinner Steve first came back to him, because in the memories of when he was Steve’s before he always towers over his handler, and he has two hands made of flesh that Steve holds gently in his own. No, in these strange thoughts he and Steve are the same height, he is part machine just as he is now, he is the same strange thing that HYDRA made him. But he and Steve are together, just like they were then. It’s not about Steve using him. It’s not the fantasy of being able to seduce his way out of service in the field. It’s something else. 

He talks to one of the doctors about it. She says it’s normal, healthy. A good sign. People—healthy, ordinary people—fantasize about sex. He hasn’t in years because he was malnourished, because he was so traumatized, because he wasn’t even allowed his own thoughts. But it’s also been years since he’s experienced any pleasure, and the body builds these things up, wants release. She tells him it’s okay if he wants to touch himself when he’s in the privacy of his own room, or that he can talk to Steve about the fantasies. That’s what she identifies the thoughts as. Fantasies.

It’s a new word for Bucky. He has wants now: he wants not to be a soldier, he wants to live here with Steve, he wants to continue feeling safe and happy as he sometimes does now. He has preferences: he prefers turkey and cheddar on his sandwiches, not ham and American like Steve does, he prefers to sleep on the floor rather than in the bed so he can feel safe, he prefers his walks around the city to the kind of intense training he used to do. Now, apparently he has fantasies—fantasies where Steve uses him in a way both just the same and entirely unlike what his handlers used to expect of him. 

The doctor said he could talk to Steve about it, but he’s not stupid enough to do that. He saw the way Steve looked at him when he tried to pleasure him with his mouth. Steve didn’t want that. Steve is disgusted at the thought of being with the Soldier, with the monster that lives in his dead friend’s mangled body, and who can blame him. 

Steve would be nice about it, if Bucky were to tell him about these fantasies. He would never say that he found them repulsive. He wouldn’t laugh at Bucky for wanting this. He probably wouldn’t even wonder whether or not that’s why HYDRA had chosen him, because he’s a sick freak who wants too much. At least, he wouldn’t wonder it out loud. 

It’s best, though, to keep his thoughts to himself.

He doesn’t touch himself, either. The doctor said it was okay, but she doesn’t have that kind of authority. He’d need Steve’s permission to experience physical pleasure. He’s not physically sure he could bear touching himself without it, and he doesn’t think he could come to orgasm without his handler’s permission.

Thoughts, though—thoughts are free. That’s one of the wonderful new things about his life. He’s allowed to think whatever he wants. No one puts codes in his mind or forces him to say what he’s thinking or uses machines to wipe him clean.

He’s free to think about this:

He imagines himself stripped completely bare. There’s something different about it this time. They’ve taken his clothes off of him before, but not like this. More often, they just tell him to report naked to a certain part of the base. Or they’d order him to strip down in front of them. A few liked to laugh at him while he did it. He gets the general sense that a sexual partner removing their clothing is supposed to be arousing. He definitely wasn’t. There wasn’t much erotic about the Winter Soldier as a partner, no matter what they tried to make him do. Their use of him was because he was there and he’d never say no, not because anyone wanted him. 

So when he imagines Steve using him, he imagines it starting with him clothed in his everyday clothes, jeans and a t-shirt. Steve steps in close, not minding how close his body is, not minding that the soldier might be getting his filth all over Steve. It’s not just about the gentleness, the difference in how Steve touches him. They weren’t always rough with him—why bother with force, when he never resisted? They could be soft, but they were never intimate. It was about getting him naked so they could fuck him, and nothing else. 

Not the way Steve would do it, at least not the Steve in his imagination. He would bare Bucky’s body little by little, running his big calloused hands over each inch of newly exposed skin, perhaps pressing his lips against Bucky’s collarbone, perhaps rubbing his strong thumbs against the sensitive skin at Bucky’s windpipe. Not choking him, not cutting off his air, not laughing as he slips out of consciousness. Just reminding him that he could, that he’s in charge, that he’s Bucky’s handler now, the one who makes all the decisions, and Bucky has only one thing to do. To obey him.

He has a handler he can trust. A handler who wants what’s best for him. A handler who will take care of him, the way they always promised they would, the way they never, ever did. 

But Steve will do that for him. Steve won’t make him do anything wrong, anything bad. All he wants is Bucky’s happiness. He’s said that again and again. And Bucky is starting to believe him.

“Are you going to be good for me?” Steve asks, and Bucky nods. Yes, he is. Yes, it’s wonderful. Yes, Steve believes in him, believes he can be good, believes he’s more than just a tool to be reprogrammed or an animal to be trained. 

Steve kisses him, then, his lips on Bucky’s, warm and soft and so hungry, like he wants to consume every part of his asset. Bucky would let him. Bucky would want him to. 

Wanting is still new but, this, this he wants: to be Steve’s, to belong to him, to be devoured by him bit by bit. 

He can’t do much that’s any use, but he can yield himself up, just like this. He can give Steve his body, if Steve desires it.

The fantasy stops there. It doesn’t go beyond kissing. He doesn’t want to imagine what happens next. It would be too much, too wonderful, too terrible to think of Steve pressing his fingers inside him, or bending him over and fucking him, or using his mouth. That’s not what he wants, anyway.

What he wants is the closeness, the intimacy. What he wants is for Steve to look at his body and want him. He used to, before. He used to desire Bucky, not just because of the pleasure that fucking him could bring Steve, but for something else. 

He’s not sure what that feeling is, exactly, but he thinks it might be love.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No extra warnings for this chapter. I'm glad to be back!

He looks at himself in the mirror. The man to whom this face belongs—formerly codenamed Winter Solider, formerly a U.S. sergeant, formerly a prisoner of war—is Bucky Barnes. Everything that HYDRA did to him, they did to that kid in Brooklyn. That’s the hardest thing to accept. There is no break, no moment where he came to deserve what happened to him. 

Bucky Barnes was an innocent. A flirt, and then a soldier, but an innocent nonetheless. 

Everything HYDRA did: every blow, every rape, every wipe, every single one of those things, they did to Bucky Barnes. They made him into what he is now. They did that to a kid from Brooklyn, a kid who'd never hurt anybody. They did that to him. 

He understands, suddenly, why it was so hard to see it. Because the alternative, the truth, is unbearable. It is so unfair, so mindlessly and senselessly cruel. He couldn’t have let himself think about it, during all the cloudy years of torment, because he wouldn’t have been able to stop the forbidden rage from bubbling up and if he’d ever shown an emotion so utterly forbidden as anger, they would have hurt him so badly. It wasn’t safe to remember. There was more than the damage that they’d done to his brain, there was the certainty that if he did remember, that if he ever showed that there was more to him than a lifeless shell to be commanded, he would be hurt again. His own mind hid that away and protected him. He’s not sure whether or not to be grateful.

But now he knows.

Now he knows that he's always been a man, a man like any other. Not a thing, not a machine, not a piece of property. Now he knows that he didn't deserve it. 

Not all of his memories are back. A lot of the earlier times are confusing, and there are some things that are particularly blurry. He remembers a lot about Brooklyn and before, and not so much about the early years of his captivity with HYDRA. The doctors say they aren’t sure if he’ll ever totally get that back. He was being wiped so frequently during that time that the memories may just be lost forever. 

He’s okay with that, strangely enough. He’s not sure if he wants to remember being tortured and tormented at the hands of HYDRA. Maybe he would rather just forget about all of it and try to move on with his life as much as possible. 

He takes one last lingering look at himself. There have certainly been some physical changes. The most obvious it he arm, but he also has long, unkempt hair, and his face has aged, shifted, even though it’s only been a few years for him. Still, the resemblance on the outside is obvious. He wonders how much of James Buchanan Barnes is still left inside him. 

Bucky—he lets everyone call him Bucky now—is looking for something to do with himself. He can’t spend all day loitering around the apartment. It isn’t fair to Steve, and honestly he’s starting to get more than a little bored with never having anything to do.

He’s just not sure what else there is to do in this new world.

He was a sniper. Before that, a soldier. Before that, he worked down at the docks. He remembers that back-breaking and boring work quite well. If the young Bucky had other aspirations, he let them go a long time ago. He knew he’d never amount to more than a laborer, especially not with Steve to take care of. He was supporting them both most of the time, or at least paying a good share of the bills. It meant that whatever he might have wanted as a kid, it was on hold so that Steve would be all right.

It’s strange to think of Steve, who is not his handler but is the closest thing he has to one now, being in that position—being vulnerable, being helpless. Needing Bucky to take care of him. Now it’s the other way around.

But when he looks back on it, he was glad to help. He never felt angry or restrained that Steve needed his support, but rather grateful that he could help, and that he was the person Steve trusted enough to turn to, even when he was resentful that he needed help at all.

It’s just possible, Bucky imagines, that maybe Steve feels that way about taking care of him. Maybe he isn’t angry that Bucky is so needy, that he still needs constant reassurance, that he still expects danger around every corner. Maybe he’s just happy to be able to help.

And help he does. 

Their routine makes things easier. There’s less for Bucky to worry about when he understands what’s happening and when. But the gaps in the day, the long periods of time when he has nothing at all to do, are becoming more and more apparent.

He goes to Steve with the problem as soon as he’s identified it. He wouldn’t have, just a few weeks ago, but he’s starting to feel like he can tell Steve these things—when he’s unhappy, or even just when he could be happier.

“I want to do something,” he says.

This might not be the best way to start off the conversation. Steve looks up from his paperwork, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I need something to do all day.”

“Is this about—“

Bucky cuts him off before he can be forced to have that conversation again. Being able to interrupt is a new skill, and he likes practicing it. Like everything he does to show that he’s coming back to himself, that he’s developing the ability to differentiate between what he wants and what he doesn’t, it helps Steve feel better about the situation, as well as being worth doing for Bucky. Plus, he’ll get a pleased smile from his therapist when he tells her about this. “No, I don’t mean sex, Steve. I mean, right now I don’t have a job, anything useful I can do. And I don’t mean useful in the sense of I-perceive-myself-as-an-object-to-be-used. I mean, I need to be like a functioning member of society, sooner or later. I have this whole second chance at life, right? I need to at least attempt to do something with it. I mean, I can’t just sit around here, wasting my time. I should do something. Maybe something for somebody else.” He recognizes that he’s babbling. It’s because he can feel the fear in his stomach. What if Steve doesn’t agree with him? What if Steve gets mad at him for asking for something? He knows it’s irrational, but it doesn’t help him feel any less sick at the thought.

“You’re right,” Steve says. “I’ve been so glad just to have you around, and so worried about you, I haven’t thought long-term about what you’re going to do. But we’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course. What kind of thing would you like to do? Would you want to be with the Avengers, at all? I don’t mean active combat, of course, but there’s all kinds of behind the scenes stuff that Nick and his staff take care of, or technical—“

“I don’t think so,” he says, after a moment of consideration. “I don’t know if I want to be part of any organization again.”

Well, if anyone can understand that, it’s Steve. “Well, you can do anything, Buck. Anything in the world, okay? We don’t have to worry about money anymore. Our time is our own. Whatever you decide you want, I’m gonna make sure you get it.”

It’s a big promise, but Bucky doesn’t doubt, not for a moment, that Steve means every single word of it. He smiles. “Thanks, Steve.”

“Let’s brainstorm, yeah? You could make a list. All the things you think might make you happy. All the things you want from your new life.”

At first, he’d thought all he wanted was not to have to kill. Then, not to be hurt, once he realized Steve wasn’t going to force him back into battle. Then he just wanted to be allowed to stay near Steve. 

No one is going to take any of that away from him—no one is even going to try. He’ll have all his needs met, no matter what he does or doesn’t do.

So what is he going to do with his new life? How is he going to be happy?

He can’t undo the damage he’s done in his years as the Winter Soldier. Even thinking that would be absurd, an insult to all of those he killed. 

But maybe he has the chance to do a little bit of good.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> will any events ever happen in this fic? stay tuned!

One of Steve’s rules is that they have check-ins once a week. It’s not a rule. That’s what Steve says. It’s a request. But Steve is the one who found Bucky his job, so Steve gets to set the terms on which he gets to keep it. That’s only fair. Even if Steve wouldn’t want Bucky to put it like that. Wouldn’t think it’s like that. That’s because Steve, as good as he is, doesn’t really know how the world works. The way it works is, if you want something, you give something in return. And Steve had been very clear on what he wanted. 

“I’m gonna be honest with you, Buck,” Steve had said, “because I’d want you to be honest with me. I’m really worried about you taking this gig on. It hasn’t been so long since you came back, and it’s been even less time since you figured out who you were. That makes me worry that you’re not doing this for the right reasons, or that you aren’t going to do better once you start, because this is going to be really hard. I’m also not going to stop you, ‘cause I’m not your handler or your keeper or the boss of you. I just want you to know that there’s no shame in not being able to do it.”

What a ridiculous thing to say. Of course failure is shameful, even when Bucky sets the mission parameters himself.

But to make Steve feel better, they’d agreed. To start out with, he’ll work no more than one day a week. He won’t stay late or switch hours with anyone. And once a week he and Steve will check in to make sure Bucky is doing all right. 

“You still liking work all right?”

“Yeah.” Bucky isn’t sure liking it is quite the right word, but he’s doing something important. Really important. 

Bucky wasn’t sure, at first, would he could do that would be any good to anyone. He doesn’t know anything about the world these days. He doesn’t have any computer skills or anything like that. All he knows how to do is how to kill and how to be fucked. And he doesn’t want either of those.

What he wants is to help. 

At first, he’d had the idea that it would be best to do something as directly related as possible to the damage he’d done. To help the victims of terrorism or the families who had lost someone to a shooting, or to work with veterans or even rape survivors (though it’s still strange for him to think of himself as being one of them). But quickly enough, he’d decided against that. He’s still too vulnerable. He could do more good doing something else entirely than working too closely with one of the groups that will remind him of all the harm he’s done.

So he settles, with Steve’s help, on another kind of work entirely. He’s taken up a job at a homeless shelter. It’s a volunteer job, which he’s grateful for. He doesn’t want a paycheck for his work, especially because (no matter what Bucky says) Steve won’t take any money from him to pay for living expenses, so he figures the shelter’s money is better off staying right where it will do the most good. 

Steve—for all that he’s usually history’s biggest do-gooder—has been very anxious about Bucky taking on this role. He reminds him that some people that are homeless might be drug users or ill, that they might say mean things or try to hurt Bucky, that he should be careful not to let them get to him too much. 

He tries to remind Steve that he’s seen a lot worse in his life than an offhand comment from a drunk, but Steve just frowns. 

“I know, but I also know you can’t really, well, you can’t really stand up for yourself the way you used to. And I worry about you.”

He hasn’t quite figured out what Steve means when he says that, but he says it a lot, so it’s up there on the list of code phrases of his new life that he’s trying to figure out.

Regardless, the fact is that Steve has nothing to worry about. Bucky’s new job doesn’t involve a lot of face-time with the shelter’s residents. This week, he spent four hours on the morning shift flipping vacant bunks to be ready for new residents, and in the afternoon, he washed up lunch dishes. Both tasks seemed difficult at first with only one arm, but he finds ways around that. 

He’s not sure how good he actually is at this new job. Everyone seems to like him well enough, but that might just be because Bucky’s presence comes along with a generous donation of Steve’s money. Steve hasn’t actually said that he did that, but Bucky isn’t stupid. He’d be angry, except that there’s no way everyone around here would be so nice to him without Steve’s contribution. And of course that he has no reason to be angry with his handler. With his friend. With Steve. 

He still can’t make the words come out right in his head, but he’s starting to be able to do it in his heart, at least. He knows that Steve won’t hurt him. He thinks he knows that. 

That’s about how things go in Bucky’s head most of the time. He thinks a thing, and then convinces himself that he didn’t really think it, or that it shouldn’t have been thought, or, or, or. He has a headache nearly all the time. About the only part of his week when he can focus on anything except the pervasive worry about what’s going to happen to him next is when he’s at work, when he’s at least distracted enough by the challenge of making a bed with only one arm to focus on something else. 

So when Steve asks him how it’s going at work, or how he’s feeling, that’s about all he can come up with. That he thinks it’s going okay. It… isn’t great, to say the least. 

Steve always frowns a little bit at him when he says that. He doesn’t think that Steve is going to hurt him. He doesn’t. It’s just that he doesn’t like it when Steve is unhappy with him. 

And maybe he’s a little afraid that Steve will hurt him. Steve would be really upset if he knew that, so of course Bucky doesn’t tell him. But it’s hard not to be a little afraid. Everyone he’s known for the past seventy years or so has decided, sooner or later, that what they really want is to hurt him. Or, looking back, they’ve just decided that, whether or not they care one way or another, whether or not they find anything desirable about Bucky, he’s just too convenient to pass up, and they might as well fuck him. Everyone, eventually, decides he’s not a person at all. Steve probably will, too. 

No, he won’t. Steve knew him before. Steve loved him before. They were friends. Steve wouldn’t do that to him. 

“Buck?” Steve says. His voice sounds like it’s coming from a long ways away. Bucky forces himself to focus, to realize where he is. He’s sitting at Steve’s kitchen table, across from his handler. Across from his friend. Steve is frowning slightly, his hand half-stretched across the table to Bucky but not touching him. 

“I wish you would just do it,” Bucky says, before he can stop himself. 

“What?”

“I know you think you won’t, but you will. Sooner or later, everyone always figures out what I’m really good for. You will too. You’ll get tired of this, of playing house with a thing. You’ll want me gone, at best.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, which isn’t the right thing at all. He’s supposed to understand, not apologize. He’s supposed to realize that Bucky is asking to be fucked and that means Bucky wanted it all along and that means Bucky isn’t a person, isn’t going to get better whatever that means, isn’t going to be anything more than an asset and he can just go back to being used the way he’s designed to be. 

Bucky must have made a noise or recoiled, because Steve flinches back in his chair.   
“I just… Christ, Buck, I just keep fucking this up. All I want is for you to get better, and I just keep makin’ it worse. I thought checking in like this would let me keep an eye on how you’re feeling, so I wouldn’t mess up again, miss something important like that you were still thinkin’ of yourself as the Asset. But I’ve done it again. How long has this been scarin’ you? How long’ve you been waiting for me to—“ Steve’s voice cuts off, like someone’s choking him. His accent gets stronger when he’s upset, Bucky notes absently. It makes his voice sound more familiar. 

“I don’t know,” Bucky replies honestly, since he’s been asked a direct question. “At first I wasn’t afraid of it, not really. I just knew it would happen. But the waiting is getting harder, the more I… the more I sometimes think that maybe it won’t? I don’t know.” He’s said too much, and he knows it. With HYDRA, he cultivated a habit of silence. The fewer words he said, the less anyone could do to him. But now the words have run out of his mouth all at once, like he can’t stop them, and that gives Steve so many more chances to be angry with him. 

“You just…” Steve takes a long shaky breath. “You just hold on to that thought, okay? I’m not gonna push you. I’m not gonna ask you to be sure of anything at all yet. Of course you aren’t, not after everything you’ve been through. But that maybe not… I want you to keep thinkin’ about that maybe not. As much as you can. And you can always ask me to remind you, if you want me too. Although of course I understand if that isn’t easy. If there’s something I can do—“

“I mean, would you punish me now? So I would know what it’ll be like. I just… I’ve never had an enhanced handler before. I’m not sure what…” He’s not sure how much it will hurt, but that’s probably why Steve is waiting so long, right? To build up his fear. Stupid, to ask for a sample. He should just be enjoying this break as long as he gets it. No, no, that’s not it. Steve’s waiting because— he’s not waiting. He isn’t hurting Bucky because he doesn’t want to. Because he won’t.

“No,” Steve says, flatly and calmly now. “Not now, not ever. And you’re gonna see that one of these days, Buck. One day soon. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Bucky nods once, like he believes him. It’s the fastest route to quiet, and he doesn’t want to upset Steve any more tonight, not when Steve has already done so much for him. “Can we still have Chinese for dinner?” he asks, because Steve is always pleased when he asks for things, and Bucky hasn’t been punished for requesting rations of a particular kind yet, despite it being a frequent request. 

“‘Course. Anything you want.”

It’s the other way around, but he doesn’t say that.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It might be a while before my next update (I will once again be travelling for work) but hopefully this will tide everyone over for a bit!

“Do you know what today is?” Steve asks him. 

Bucky shakes his head. He feels a little tremor of anxiety, like maybe he’s messed something up and Steve is going to be mad at him, but it passes quickly. Steve hasn’t hurt him yet. 

He’s been trying to think about it like that as much as possible. 

He can’t be sure that Steve will never hurt him, as much as he might like to be, but he can be pretty sure that Steve hasn’t hurt him yet, and so the odds that this is the moment he’s going to break down and punish Bucky are pretty low. It’s better to think about it that way. Trying to convince himself Steve would never hurt him is too scary, even though he’s pretty sure it’s true. Better to just think about what he knows for sure: Steve hasn’t done anything bad to him yet. He probably won’t do it now. 

“It’s been a year,” Steve says. “One year ago today, you came to live with me here.”

Oh. “A whole year.”

“Yeah.” Steve’s hand twitches, the way it does when he’s thinking about touching Bucky and decides not to. Bucky is getting pretty good at noticing when that’s happening, though he hasn’t figured out what to do about it yet. What he wants to do is reach out and close the gap between the two of them, but he’s afraid to. He can’t help thinking about when he’d tried to please Steve with his mouth and been shoved away, even though he understands that was different. He still worries that Steve might not stop him if he wanted to, that he might put Bucky too far above himself. He does that a lot, with a lot of things. So Bucky doesn’t want to ask, for fear that Steve might say no. Or maybe for fear that he might say yes. Maybe for fear of what would happen then. 

Would his wanting ever stop, if he could have Steve’s touch? Or would his skin just thirst for more, the way it does now, so desperate for Steve’s warmth on him? Would he want more and more until he burst?

“I know how I feel about it,” Steve says. “Scared, sometimes, that I won’t measure up. That whatever I do, I’ll never be able to help you enough. Tired, a lot of them time—I won’t lie to you, it’s hard work. Angry at everything they took away from us. But mostly, so happy that you’re back. So relieved and just so grateful that we can have a life together, whatever that life consists of. So I’m wondering how you feel.”

“The same way,” Bucky says at once. “Scared, like you said. That I won’t measure up. Let me finish,” he continues in the same breath, because he can see Steve itching to interrupt him. “You have all these memories of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, best friend, war hero, ladies’ man, Brooklyn boy. I’ve only got some of the intel you’re working with here, and it’s pretty important to me not to mess this up. I wanna be the guy you remember, and it’s always a struggle to be able to be him or anything like him. Tired, yeah, because I’m working fucking hard. Angry that I have to, and that you have to. That you’re stuck as my caretaker, not… not any of the other things we could be to each other. But happy. All the same, happy.”

“What would you want to be to each other?” Steve asks, and Bucky can tell from his tone that he’s trying to pretend to be all casual about it but that he doesn’t actually feel casual about it, like, at all. It’s very Steve, and it makes Bucky smile. 

In fact, he’s too busy smiling at Steve, and then enjoying the warm feeling he gets when Steve smiles back, that he forgets to worry about his answer. “We could get married now, you know,” he blurts. And then immediately regrets it. It’s not the kind of thing he should joke about. Of course, it’s not a joke, not to him. If Steve ever wanted to be with him like that, even back in the semi-mythical days of Brooklyn, that’s long past. There is no way he would ever want to link himself to the shell of his best friend, the husk of the man he used to love. It’s insulting to even joke about it—he shouldn’t have done it. Steve would be right to be angry at him, except…

Except, as Bucky dares a glance at him through his lowered eyes, except that as he peeks up, flinching, not quite sure what to do or say to get himself out of trouble, Steve is staring at him, his eyes wide open and glowing with the brightness of unshed tears. These aren’t miserable tears of sadness or anger, though—they’re the tears of happiness Bucky remembers him shedding when he first saw Bucky again. “Would… you would…” Steve stammers, apparently too overcome to speak. 

“Would I want to?” Bucky finishes for him. He’s not entirely sure where his courage comes from, except that Steve has so often had to be the brave one—almost always, really. It’s time for Bucky to take his turn, as much as he can, for him to be the one to bridge the gap that always seems to grow between the two of them no matter what they want. 

“Yeah,” Steve says, and then pauses, as if unsure what to say next. Then he takes a deep breath. “I… I would. If you would. Not tomorrow, obviously. I would want—don’t take this the wrong way, Buck. Um. I want to wait til you’re a little better first. Not because I don’t want to be with you right now, just the way you are! But because, well, I love you and if we went for this, it would break my heart if you ever… I mean, I would want to feel like I could be sure that it was really what you wanted.” 

That makes perfect sense to Bucky. Maybe he should feel offended, but the fact is that he has had a lot of false starts in his quest to go back to being whatever it is that he used to be. Steve doesn’t want to take the risk of him ruining everything. Of course, he wouldn’t use those words, but that’s the general idea. Bucky might very well decide that being with Steve isn’t what he really wants after a few weeks, a few months, whatever. He doesn’t think he would—he’s pretty sure that he loves Steve and he’ll want to be with him forever—but it’s true that he can’t be completely sure, not when everything has changed for him so often in the last few months. The last year, he guesses he ought to say. A whole year. He can hardly believe it. He can scarcely remember being the trembling, terrified shell who first came here, sure that at any second someone would come around the next corner and force him back into the chair and he would forget all of this, surer still that Steve was just biding his time until the moment when he would finally tell Bucky that he had had quite enough, in fact, of playacting like the asset was some kind of person and that he’d have to punish him for all those lapses now. He would be lying if he didn’t admit that sometimes he still worries about it, but it’s not like he’s constantly trembling in terror anymore, and that probably ought to count for something. 

He’s getting better, maybe. And it’ll only help if he has something he wants. Not a wedding, really. He wouldn’t say no, exactly, if marrying Steve were an option on offer, but he’s not really thinking that far ahead. Really, what he means is that he wants to be with Steve. Not belogn to him. Be with him. 

“That makes sense,” Bucky says, nodding slightly. “I don’t think I’m ready yet either. And I’ve been doin’ well, but I’d really hate to freak out on you if we were gonna be intimate again, especially for the first time in such a long time. So, let’s think about it, huh? How do we get from here to there?”

“That… is that what you want to do?”

“Yeah. You gotta trust me at least that far, Stevie. Trust that when I say I want to figure this out with you, I want to get there, I mean it.”

“I believe you,” Steve says, smiling at him so bright and beautiful even with tears in his eyes. “I believe you, Buck. Shit.”

“Would kissing be okay? Only if you want. I’m not saying make out or anything, I’m saying, maybe, one kiss? For our one-year anniversary of me being back. And for the start of whatever we’re figuring out.”

Steve pauses for a second, and Bucky knows him well enough to know that he’s thinking it over carefully. It wouldn’t be Steve if he didn’t overthink anything having to do with relationships, and underthink just about anything else, he supposes. Trust Steve to go charging into the middle of a war zone without an escape plan, but ask him to talk about his feelings and he freezes up like he’s walking a damn tightrope or something. It would be cute if Bucky weren’t always the one on the other end of the one-sided conversation. 

Bucky doesn’t say anything else, though. He doesn’t want to push it too far. Then Steve might think that Bucky was just trying to get something out of him again, or do something that he doesn’t really want to do. Either idea is almost completely intolerable. 

He has to admit that the anticipation is killing him a bit, though. 

And then Steve stands up, and crosses the distance between the two of them, ending up at Bucky’s side of their small table. He looks Bucky right in the eyes, smiling slightly. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure you’re sure?”

Bucky laughs at this. “I promise, Steve. And I’m sure that I don’t think anything bad will happen if I say no, and I’m sure that you won’t hurt me, and I’m sure that I want this. I want this,” he says. He isn’t sure how he can possibly convince Steve, but it turns out he doesn’t have to, because all of a sudden Steve’s warm, soft lips are on his and for the first time in seventy years, they’re kissing.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sex talk and brief mention of sexual trauma and self-harm.
> 
> The next chapter after this will be the last one, followed by an epilogue.

It never gets easy. Easier, sure. But never easy. 

There are still days when Bucky doesn’t know who he is. When he wakes up and can’t remember. When he goes looking for trouble in his own mind. When he expects Steve to hurt him. When he thinks he wants Steve to hurt him.

There aren’t a lot of those days anymore, though. He used to count how long he could go between one episode and the next. A day, and then a week. A month, and then two. At one point, he made it five whole months before the chance sight of a leashed dog tied up in front of a coffeeshop sent him spiraling to his knees because he had once been a thing like that, kept chained up to hide its danger, and he . After that, he stopped counting. Because he would have to make it 154 days to even break even and that thought was too depressing. But he still had to get through every one of those days. So he gave up counting and just got through them. Some easily, and some with gritted teeth, but he made it through all of them. 

At some point the good days start getting better. He’s not afraid of Steve at all, on the good days. He knows that Steve would never hurt him, and a lot of other things too. He doesn’t worry that Steve will get sick of taking care of him, or that he should disappear into the dark night and let Steve get on with his life. He knows there wouldn’t be much of a life for Steve, if Bucky left him. He knows when Steve says he loves him, that that’s the truest thing either of them knows.

It’s enough, most of the time.

If Bucky could go back and undo it all—well, of course he would. If he could have fallen from that train and died the way Steve believed he had, if he could be buried beneath the snowfall with no marker above his body, if he could be nothing but bleached-white bones now, he would do it if it would bring back those he killed. But he can’t. There’s nothing he can do to bring those people back. He didn’t choose to be the Winter Soldier, and he didn’t choose to do any of what the Winter Soldier did. Now, at last, after years of hearing Steve repeat that again and again, he finally knows it to be true. He won’t say that he doesn’t deserve the guilt. He won’t say that the blood isn’t on his hands. But he never chose to do it, and that, at least, he can believe. 

He didn’t choose to outlive his victims. He didn’t choose to be saved. He didn’t choose to have a new life in a future he could never have imagined. But he does.

And he has to make what best of that he can. He does so by trying to do a little good for the world every day, by working directly with the people who are hurting or suffering who he can feed or nourish or protect. And he does so by loving Steve, Steve who is so good that the light seems to shine out of him everywhere he goes, Steve who has saved the world again and again, Steve who is the one person who has done more to help the world than Bucky has done to harm it. Steve who, in spite of that, chooses to be with him, chooses him again and again. What can Bucky do, except take his outstretched hand? What can Bucky do, except refrain from pushing him away when he reaches out?

He didn’t choose this, but eventually he’s forced, by sheer logic if nothing else, to accept that there isn’t much to do other than to make the best of it. To go on living. Those that died at his hands or HYDRA’s have no more life left to live, and Bucky does. It isn’t what anyone would have chosen (except maybe Steve, whose otherwise sterling moral compass tends to get a bit shaky where Bucky is concerned) but it is reality. He has the chance to make a new life for himself, in a world he thought he would never see.

And one of the things he is determined to experience again is pleasure. 

He remembers pretty well now, before the war. He and Steve shared what they could—quick kisses, stolen moments, fumbled embraces. But there was never enough time, and there was always the danger of being found out, since at that point most of what they were doing was illegal. Now, they can do whatever they want. Or they could, if it weren’t for Bucky’s mountain of issues.

But if there’s one thing that has changed about Steve—and in general, he’s still very much the same man he ever was—it’s that now he has an uncharacteristic, even shocking, new wellspring of patience, a sudden ability to wait for what he wants, a knowledge that some things worth having take time. For him, one of those things is Bucky. 

Unlike the angry, tiny Steve of Bucky’s memories, this Steve is endlessly capable of waiting without complaint. He still rushes into certain things with his fists drawn, acting before he thinks, but when it comes to Bucky, he seems to have an unlimited supply of patience. 

Bucky, however, does not. Maybe it’s because he’s suffered so much. Maybe it’s because he’s aware, now, that life can end at any moment. Maybe he’s reacting to the change in Steve. But he wants what he wants, and what he wants is to take all of Steve’s clothes off and get his hands all over his beautiful, strong body. It’s been seventy years since they touched, and Bucky isn’t willing to wait one more. 

He spent a long time agonizing about how to talk to Steve about it. His therapist said that if he wasn’t ready to talk about sex, he wasn’t ready to have it, which is probably true but wasn’t all that helpful. Still, he put it on the back burner for a while. He thought about other things, other ways they could get closer without trying for the kinds of pleasures Bucky both longs for and can hardly bear to think of. 

He and Steve then had several of what he thinks of as warm-up conversations. They check in about their level of physical touch, among other things. They talk about sex and touching almost once a week—not in the concrete details, though. There’s been no suggestion that actual intercourse is something they might have with one another. Which is too bad, if you ask Bucky. 

Bucky has stopped thinking of these conversations as part of his recovery, and started thinking of them as part of his life. He’s probably never going back to the person he was before HYDRA forced him to become the Winter Soldier. He’ll always have those memories, and any partner he has—so hopefully just Steve—will always have to accommodate for that. Bucky will never have a life without therapy visits, without brain scans to make sure the damage HYDRA did to his cognitive capacities hasn’t worsened, without check-ins to make sure a kiss doesn’t terrify him.

So those check-ins don’t fill him with painful shame the way they did at first, when he was consumed with the memories of the way Steve used to be able to just grab him and kiss him and know that they both wanted it. He isn’t worried about going back to that because, well, he accepts that it’s more likely than not that he never will. If something huge changes, and he finds himself suddenly able to be impulsive about anything sexual or physically intimate, Steve will be the first to know. They can’t have that again, and so they’d better both find something else to want. 

In the meantime, Steve asks, and most of the time, Bucky can say yes. So far, that’s only been for kissing and holding hands and cuddling—the kinds of physical intimacies that, although they might trigger him just with the feeling of skin-on-skin, have little to do with the abuse he faced at HYDRA’s hands. Sex, on the other hand—and especially, though he hates even thinking it, giving Steve pleasure no matter by what means—those things he was forced to do over and over. 

But he’s decided he’s finally ready. He’s at least ready to talk about it, to ask Steve what he thinks, what he wants. And finally, after several missteps, he can trust Steve to have his own back, too, to say no if that’s what he means instead of only thinking about what’s best for Bucky. Maybe the end result of this conversation will be that Steve doesn’t want to or, at least, doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He’s not sure, but he’s sure that he can handle it, no matter what Steve says next. 

The timer beeps, and Bucky is jolted from his thoughts. He checks the oven. He’s been baking a pie. Not quite to smooth things over with Steve, although a full stomach never hurts when trying to broach a difficult subject. Not quite to prove that he’s doing okay now, although his baking hobby has been one of the major ways he’s shown that over the last (nearly two) years now. Mostly because he wanted to. 

That the pie is apple and salted caramel, Steve’s favorite, is definitely in the hopes that if something goes wrong in the conversation, Bucky can sweeten him up with another slice. 

The top crust is perfectly golden brown and Bucky pulls the pie out of the oven. Predictably, within seconds Steve appears in the kitchen, nose first. 

“Is that pie I smell?”

“It is. Sit down, I’ll get you a piece in a minute when it cools.”

“Can’t I have some now?”

“No. Wait, you’ll burn your tongue, and I don’t want the slices of my beautiful pie looking all slumped in and sad because you couldn’t wait for the caramel to stabilize.”

“I don’t care if I burn my tongue,” Steve says hopefully, but he takes his seat. Bucky fusses around the kitchen for another moment or two, getting out what he’ll need to serve the pie, flipping on the coffee pot, getting vanilla ice cream out of the freezer so it’ll be the right temperature to scoop for the pie when it’s done cooling. He takes a moment to marvel at the fact that he can be trusted to hold a chef’s knife for slicing pie now without anyone worrying that he might use it to harm someone else or himself, that he can reach into the freezer to get out ice cream without the feeling of cold on his skin sending him into a spiral of painful memories about how he was put on the ice. Then he gets them both a cup of coffee and a piece of pie and ice cream. When Steve has cleared his plate, Bucky clears his throat.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something, Stevie.”

“Yeah?”

“Recently we’ve been, uh, touching more, I guess.” There goes his confidence. Right out the window as soon as he opens his big, dumb mouth. Damn. 

“I noticed,” Steve says, smiling a little, and at least he isn’t freaking out. That’s good. One of them should be calm. 

“I really like it. I like being intimate with you. I like touching you. I was thinking we could do a little bit more, if you wanted. I’m not saying jump right to sex right away. But fooling around the way we used to, in the old days. I’d like that, if you would.”

“I would too,” Steve says straight away, and, wow, that was a lot easier than Bucky was expecting. He was expecting an argument, if he’s being honest, or at least a long and drawn out conversation that included a lot of statements about how they each felt and so on. But no, Steve is leaning slightly towards him. “We’ll have to take it really slow, figure out what we’re both comfortable with—and what we like. But I want to. Thank you for bringing it up. I’ve been thinking for a while that we might be ready, and hesitating to talk about it. So I’m glad you did. How do you want to start?”

Bucky shrugs, but of course he has a plan in mind. “I was thinking tonight, if you don’t have other plans.”

“If I did, I would cancel them,” Steve says fervently, and Bucky laughs.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is finally complete! Thank you so much for all of everyone's patience over the long, long time it took me to wrap this project up. I hope y'all enjoy the final chapter.

Bucky is alone in their room to start things off. Well, to not start things off. To delay the start of things, rather. He’s worrying, hoping to get all the worrying out of the way before they actually start anything. 

He forces himself to take a few slow, deep breaths. He’d asked Steve to give him a little time alone, and now he’s rethinking that as a request. Maybe it would have been better for him not to be left alone with his thoughts. Especially not when he could be kissing Steve, instead. He gets that making time with Steve isn’t a solution to all his problems, but it does have the advantage of being distracting, no matter how anxious he feels. 

He reminds himself that he doesn’t have to calm himself down. He can call things off for tonight and still count on Steve being there for him. Hell, he can call this off, like, permanently. Steve wouldn’t even be disappointed, probably. Or if he were, the pleasure he takes in getting to deny himself something he wants for Bucky’s sake would make it up to him. Saint Steve the martyr, Mrs. Rogers used to call him with a fond smile, and Bucky always agreed. Bucky doesn’t know how he ended up falling for such an absolutely absurd man. 

His old fears feel almost ridiculous to him now, now that his new life is taking shape around him. He knows that the days of violence and pain are behind him. Steve is never going to make him do anything he wants, in bed or out of it. He certainly wouldn’t try to force Bucky to hurt anyone. 

He remembers the old days, the way they used to fool around in their rickety single bed or in shared bedrolls in the field. There was always the danger of being caught, the fear that they’d be shamed or, worse, that they’d be attacked, that he wouldn’t be able to protect Steve from what would happen if someone knew what they were doing behind the closed door of Bucky’s one-room apartment. For most of their youth, he was also worrying about Steve’s health. The exertion of sex or a wrong move on Bucky’s part could have left him badly injured, needing a doctor they couldn’t explain things to or afford to pay. Bucky was always working, usually exhausted. 

Back in the day, this would have been a dream come true for them: all the time they want, their own huge apartment where no one will interrupt them, Steve healthy and strong. 

So what if they have some new problems? So what if Bucky’s strongest memories of sex are now being held down and forced and hurt? So what if he’s worried he’ll end up having to push Steve away and break his heart too? It was never meant to be easy for them, for two boys from Brooklyn who fell in love at first sight in 1922. So the challenges are a little different than what they expected, but they’re facing them together, and that’s always been what matters the most. There’s not a damn thing in the world that Bucky can’t do as long Steve at his side, and he figures Steve still feels pretty much the same. 

There’s a knock on the door. Bucky rolls his eyes, and just like that, he’s not nervous anymore. “It’s your bedroom too, you dumb punk.”

Steve lets the door slowly slide open, his flushed face just sticking in. “I just didn’t want to interrupt in case you were doing something private.”

“Thought I might be warming myself up for you in here?”

“No,” Steve stammers, blushing even redder. Like he’s been thinking about it. He probably has, too. Steve had a pretty dirty mind back in the day, if Bucky remembers correctly. At least he hasn’t been working himself into a lather about whether or not Bucky’s gonna be okay with whatever happens here between the two of them tonight. 

“C’mere.”

The door opens the rest of the way, and Steve crosses the distance between the two of them in just a few short steps. Bucky still hasn’t gotten close to Steve being so damned tall. It doesn’t seem quite right, somehow.   
Steve sits on the side of the bed, within arms-length of Bucky but not quite touching him yet. Bucky rolls his eyes and slides over next to him, so they’re sitting hip-to-hip and thigh-to-thigh, the way they always used to, the way they do on the couch most of the time now. “This is weird, huh?” Steve asks, breaking the silence between them. And he’s right. It is, and not just because of everything that’s happened. It feels different. 

“Yeah. We never used to be like, huh, seven p.m., time for our scheduled fooling around.”

“It was more like, ooh, door’s closed for thirty seconds, let me stick my hand down Steve’s pants.” But Steve says that with a smile, like he’s trying to remind Bucky he didn’t mind, and that’s never how he used to tease him in the old days. 

There’s no going back, Bucky reminds himself. But if he’s lucky, they can go forward. “It was hard work for me, seein’ as how you could never get enough.” Bucky smiles and leans in for a kiss. Either the joke or the kiss relaxes Steve some, thank goodness, because he melts into Bucky’s touch, and his hand even comes up to Bucky’s face, his hand weaving in Bucky’s hair. 

There’s a ghost of something there, an old touch. Pierce wouldn’t let him cut his hair, even though it got in his eyes in missions. He liked watching Bucky get yanked around by his hair too much, even though he never deigned to touch him himself, not at the parties when—no. No, he isn’t going to think about that. And Steve isn’t grabbing him, he’s running his fingers through his hair. It’s not force, it’s sweetness and tenderness. And something else—desire. 

No one ever desired the Winter Soldier. They wanted to hurt him, they wanted to control him, they wanted to dominate him, but they didn’t want him. Not the way Steve wants him.

Which is, he realizes, as Steve starts to properly kiss him back at last, completely. Steve wanted him, happy and whole, in the 30s. Steve wanted him, rough and frightened, during the war. Steve wants him, broken and scarred, now. 

Steve’s mouth is soft but urgent, tracing a line of kisses from Bucky’s mouth up to his ear. His tongue traces the curve of Bucky’s earlobe ever-so-slightly, and Bucky feels a shiver deep in his stomach, something he’d almost forgotten. This is desire: not the trembling forbidden thing he’s feared since leaving HYDRA, not the awful unstoppable lust he couldn’t prevent when they were using him. This is what want feels like, and now he can let himself feel it. 

Bucky’s hand is on Steve, too, tangled in his hair. Wordlessly, he urges Steve on, moaning so loudly it sounds like a broken sob. 

Steve pulls away, his expression transforming from desire to anxiety in a second. “Buck? What’s the matter?”  
Bucky means to console him, but what comes out is a giggle. He doesn’t intend it, but he just can’t tamp down on the amusement. It’s just like Steve, too, now frowning at Bucky like he’s a bomb about to go off at any moment. “I love you, you idiot,” Bucky says, grabbing Steve by the shirt and pulling him down onto the bed. 

Steve lets out a gasping “Oh,” bracing Bucky on top of him as they tangle together on the bed. They could never do this in the old days. Bucky was always afraid he’d crush Steve when he was so small. But after Steve’s transformation, they’d discovered that they liked this, Bucky’s weight on top of Steve. Turns out, they still do, if the way Steve is writhing up against him is any indication. It’s a bit clumsy, keeping himself upright with only one arm, especially given the way Steve is thrusting like crazy up against him. He’s willing to put up with a little imbalance, though, given that at least Steve isn’t looking so nervous anymore. Actually, he just looks enraptured, totally caught up in moving against Bucky. 

Nonetheless, he hesitates as his hands tangle in the hem of Bucky’s shirt. “Can I?”

“Help yourself. Just, uh, don’t touch the—“ There’s no sense in acting ashamed of it. It’s the only body he’s got. “The stump, yeah? It hurts.”

“You got it.”

Bucky pulls his arm out, as Steve pulls his shirt up and over his head, tossing it thoughtlessly into the corner. Immediately, he runs his hands up and down Bucky’s bare skin. Bucky indulges him for a few moments, letting him get his fill, before leaning over him to devour his mouth yet again. 

Steve moans something unintelligible, maybe not words at all, against Bucky’s mouth, his own lips going slack. Immediately, though, Bucky pulls away. Steve isn’t the only nervous one. “You okay?”

“I just… I forgot how much I wanted this. I was afraid to want it. Afraid I’d hurt you.”

His confession, made so clearly and openly in this moment of perfect intimacy between them, breaks Bucky’s heart. “Well, you’ve got me, Rogers. Til the end of the line, huh?”

“Forever,” Steve confirms, and kisses him hard. They go on like that until Bucky’s head is spinning from the lack of air, until even his enhanced senses are dizzy to the end of his tolerance. Then they have to break apart, but only their kiss—Steve’s hand is working his way between them, fighting with both pairs of jean buttons and flies. “Okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky pants, and thank God Steve doesn’t seem to need some signed affidavit that Bucky is fine and really wants this because then he’s getting both their cocks free and wrapping his huge hand around them both and yes, that’s it, that’s the feeling he’s missed for seventy years, that’s the thing he’s wanted even when he didn’t know what it was to want, that’s Steve hard against him and thrusting against him and holding him in his hand and everywhere, all around him, and he’d be embarrassed at how fast it’s over if it weren’t ridiculous to think of shame when the only person here is Steve, the other half of his soul, holding him so close and shaking with his own climax as Bucky kisses him again and again. 

He wishes it could go on forever, that he could freeze this moment in time the way so many others have been frozen for him, but the pleasure fades even if the warmth doesn’t, and soon his arm is trembling too much to hold him up any longer. He sinks down on top of Steve, rolling off to one side so he can pillow his head on Steve’s chest. 

“I’m a mess,” Steve grumbles. It’s true, his hand and pants are filthy, and they’re both drenched with sweat. 

“Who cares,” Bucky, usually the finicky one, replies. Soon enough, the stickiness will become too much to bear, and they’ll have to shower and air out the room and probably talk about their feelings for good measure. But for now, for right now, there’s only one thing to do—and that’s lie right here in Steve’s arms, in the safest place in the world. He’s been around and around, he’s been pulled all over the world, he’s spun himself into such painful circles, but now, finally, he’s come home to rest in the place he’s always belonged.


End file.
